Reflections of A Darker Self
by LAXgirl
Summary: A deadly force has crossed over into Spiderman's dimension. Faced with an evil alternate version of himself, our hero has to accept the help of some unlikely allies to defeat his darker self who has teamed up with the Sinister Six of Spidey's world.
1. Crossing Over

I know I said I wanted to finish "Screams of the Spider" before I started this one, but I just couldn't resist! The whole idea was too much to keep to myself so I had to jumpstart it. Don't worry though, I haven't abandoned "Screams." There'll be another chapter soon, but until then, stay with me long enough for this story. Believe me, it'll be weird while reading but stick with me! 

Disclaimer: Spiderman and all other affiliated characters are not mine. 

It was a bright autumn day. One where the sky was a beautiful spread of crystal blue which stood sharply contrasted by the vibrant oranges, yellows, and reds of the turning trees. The crisp fall air was like a soothing balm to the land after months of blistering summer heat. Puffy white clouds that reminded you of suspended cotton balls hung high overhead of the city of New York, adding a gentle touch to the scene. 

But it was also one of those invigorating chilly days of early fall that seemed almost too perfect to last; as if something unspeakable hung in the air. Something that pulled on a person's insides, warning that something was about to shatter their perfect day… 

Sitting quietly surrounded by decoratively planted young maple trees in the center of New York's bustling metropolis, the quiet exterior of the Empire State University's science building looked as inconspicuous and innocent as any of the other building that spotted the sprawling campus. Young, aspiring collegiates milled lazily on the grassy lawns, basking in possibly the last days of warm sunshine before the heavy cloud of winter obscured the brilliant sky above in a blanket of asphalt gray.

And it was in that ideal picture of serenity, the world erupted into chaos. 

Singeing the chilly air, a violent plume of flames and fire suddenly exploded from the west side of the science building, erupting in a deafening thunder of shattering glass and crumbling masonry. Debris showered down onto the young students unlucky enough to be caught close enough to the erupting side of the building. Screams of terror from on looking students accompanied the roar of fire that consumed the air on all sides of its billowing walls of heat. 

As the initial explosion withered away swiftly from its own intensity, it left in its wake a gapping whole in the towering red brick structure that had once made up ESU's internationally known science building. The nearby students and faculty who had been within the general vicinity of the building had scrambled away, either to flee or call for help. 

And in that total confusion, hidden between the billowing plumes of smoke that wafted across the campus, a brightly garbed figure slipped into the gutted structure unnoticed through the massive hole that had carved itself deeply into the crippled building. 

Highlighted in the dying smolders of the violent explosion, the man's full body costume gleamed in flickering hues of crimson and royal blue. A sadistic laugh carried on the air as the figure disappeared from sight inside. 

Leaping over the strewn rubble that littered the charred and blackened hallways of the building, the man looked shrewdly about. He knew exactly where he was, regardless of the mangled and unrecognizable hallway that had at one time been painted a pristine shade of white. He had planned this attack out in advance, plus he was well acquainted with the university's science wing. He had spent countless hours in that building and he knew the layout like the back of his hand.

Sizing his surroundings up in a millisecond, the man realized he was five floors below his intended target. Below a full coverage mask of a vibrant shade that only a blind person could have missed, the man let a smug smirk slide across his lips. This was child's play. It was pitiful that a talent such as his was being put to such a trivial task as breaking into an unguarded college facility, but it was necessary to his plan. 

Turning to his left, the man took off in a sprint that would have left most medal winning track runners coughing dust in his tracks. Skidding around a corner into an untouched hallway by the explosion, the man vaulted himself several feet above the ground to a bank of elevators. 

Straddling the doors of the first elevator he came to, the masked man stood in a supernatural display of adhesive powers parallel to the tiled floor of the hall; his feet sticking unnaturally to the doorjambs of the car four feet off the ground. Wiggling his gloved fingers between the sealed doors, he merely grunted as he effortlessly pried the stubborn panels apart revealing a black void of emptiness beyond. 

Swinging his head up into the dark elevator shaft, the man smiled evilly with narrowed eyes of slyness. The occupying car of that shaft sat motionless several stories above, not creating any obstacle to his objective which lay five floors up. 

Without a word, the intruder snaked his body into the vertical tunnel, still adhering supernaturally to the grease streaked walls. With inhuman grace, he skittered like a bug up the expanse of space that separated him from his intended floor. 

Coming up to the closed doors of the fifth floor, the man again forcefully pushed the panels of the elevator shaft apart with a strength that totally contradicted his muscular, but lithely compact form. Rattling on broken tracks as they were thrown into their jambs, the doors slammed back in a loud clatter of pulverized internal gears and wheels.

"Oops…Hope they don't expect me to pay for that. They'll just have to add it to my tab," the intruder murmured in arrogant indifference to no one in particular except himself. Cocking his hooded head to look down the new set of hallways, he smirked eagerly. It wouldn't be long now. Nothing could stop him…

Somewhere beyond the thick walls of the building, the costumed man heard the first faint wails of approaching police cars. By the sound, at least two dozen squad cars, by the man's estimates. Snorting at the university's pitiful show of respect to his power by even bothering to call the NYPD to stop him, the man walked with a domineering stride to a set of large swinging doors sitting helplessly at the end of the hall. They'd all be sorry soon…

Striding confidently up to the door the man called out snidely, "Little pig, little pig, open your door or I'll huff and I'll puff and blow your door down!" Not bothering to wait for an answer or even see if the door was unlocked, he effortlessly swung his foot behind him before pummeling it with the force of a jackhammer into the offending barrier. 

Unable to withstand the devastating force that equaled that of a battering ram, the crippled door crumbled in its middle before collapsing inward with a loud crash of twisted metal. 

"Heeeeere's Johnny!" the man imitated loudly as the swirling clouds of dust settled at his booted feet.

Surveying the area, he saw two middle aged men dressed in white lab coated huddled helplessly in the far corner of the spotlessly clean room. One sported a well groomed goatee and meticulously pressed attire while the other looked like he had just rolled out of bed that morning and came to work, his clothes rumpled and hair looking as if he had stuck his finger in a light socket. 

On the other side of the room sat a monstrosity of welded metal that formed a type of upright circle with interlocking rings of shiny metal supported in an elevated platform with a long metal ramp leading down into the center of the room. At the base of the huge machine that stood a good ten feet high, sat a vast consol of various buttons and controls. And it was for this machine the intruder had come…

Gliding over the tiled floor noiselessly, the masked man approached the towering structure of metal. 

"Ah, everything I heard about your research is true! It looks like you finally completed final construction," he admired in a dangerously level tone that only hinted at his deadly potential, "I've been following your experiment for quite awhile and when I heard you had completed this beauty's construction, I decided to come here today to give you two gentleman the opportunity to give me a one-on-one demonstration of this device's capabilities. See, I have plans for this thing, but gosh darn it, I can't seem to find the owner's manual! So you two will have to do…" Violence tainted his sweetly calm voice.

The two scientist looked on in terror as the infamously known criminal stood expectantly, waiting for them to respond. The dark haired man with the goatee, Dr. Howard Marsh, was the first to find his voice and answer the intruder. "Please…you can't use this yet. We haven't even started with preliminary testing. If you were to try to use it, the resulting complications could be disastrous!" he tried to reason through a fear tightened throat. 

Letting a mirthful laugh escape his lips, the costumed man stared through the blank eyepieces of his mask at the man. "Well, let's just say I hope for your sake, nothing goes wrong…" he warned wickedly. 

"No! You can't use it! I won't let you!" cried the other scientist suddenly, rebelliously standing up to the intruder, "Howard, we can't let him use the device or all the world may be in danger. Who knows what he'll use it for! I won't let you use it! And there's nothing you can do to make us tell you, you bastard! The police are coming and they'll stop you before--*ack,*" the scruffy looking man suddenly gasped as a powerful grip slammed shut over his windpipe, closing the air to his lungs. 

"Do you know how much I hate people like you? It gets old after awhile hearing all these heroic speeches without them having anything to back them up with," the masked man sighed in complaint, looking down in apathy at the scientist's bluing face. 

Gripping his weakening hands around the attacker's iron strong grasp, the scientist clawed uselessly for air. 

"Well, you may be right in that _you _may not tell me what I need to know about this machine, but I'm sure I can find some way of convincing your friend to reconsider my offer," the super powered criminal smirked evilly as he drug the chocking man like a rag doll to a nearby window that overlooked the campus five stories below. 

Giving a last, half second look into the unmade man's fear widened eyes that were now bloodshot from oxygen deprivation, the malicious intruder suddenly wound back and hurtled his victim's body violently through the window. Glass flew everywhere as the human projectile crashed through it, snowing the lab's floor in broken shards. Fired like a missile straight into the ground far below, the sickening splat of human flesh and organs connecting with concrete pavement at high speeds echoed back up to the room. 

Leaning out the shattered remains of the window, he tisked dejectedly, "Aww, he's still moving…at least for now. I tried to be humane and make it quick and painless. Things like this can get so messy…" 

Dr. Marsh looked on in silent horror at the atrocity he had just witnesses. Marsh knew the masked man that threatened him well enough from local media coverage. And he also knew well of the long list of crimes inflicted upon the city by that costumed man. And that list included everything from murder to federal indictments. But it had always been on the news and a distant incident that had had no direct effects on his daily life, so Marsh had never really realized just what a monster the wanted felon before him really was until now. 

As the spandex garbed man turned to again look at Marsh from across the room, the frightened scientist felt he had truly seen the devil's face, his mask the color of freshly spilt blood. 

"Now as I was saying…I'll find a way to get what I want, one way or the other. It can be easy or hard…your choice," he smirked evilly under his mask, content with the sick fulfillment of his most recent crime. 

"Please…Spiderman, no," Marsh whispered in paralyzed terror as the killer neared, "It hasn't been tested…"

"I don't care!" Spiderman snarled dangerously as he, in the mere span of a heartbeat, grabbed the lapels of Marsh's lab coat and violently retched the man several feet off the ground with his superhuman strength as if the man weighed nothing at all, "You'll get this thing working or you'll be joining your friend outside in less then a minute. You have to the count of three."

"No.. I won't do it…" 

"One…"

"No, please…I have a family; a wife and kids!"

"Two…"

"Ok Ok…just please don't hurt me!" Marsh sobbed pitifully as he finally gave in and Spiderman slowly lowered him to the ground. Sickness seized the poor man's stomach in vile revulsion for giving in to the super powered vigilantly, but he was too scared and cowardly to be killed as gruesomely as his partner had. 

"Good. Now get over there and get it working," Spiderman ordered venomously in a snarl of dominance. 

"It'll need several minutes to warm up," the scientist chocked out quietly, half seized by fear that the minor delay of system warm up would cost him his life. Luckily, the masked man merely waved a hand dismissively in indifferent for the minor delay. It wasn't like anyone could stop him now. 

Marsh stumbled in a daze to the large consol beside the massive machine that Spiderman had made the central target of his violent siege of the university campus. Pressing numerous button into the computer port of the consol, he entered in a long and complicated series of encrypted passwords that only he and his late friend had known to gain access to the activation procedures of the device. 

Gaining access to the start up program, the scientist pecked away at the keyboard while Spiderman hovered uncomfortably silent to his side, studying over the man's shoulder what he was doing. Outside, the howls of police sirens cried nearer as the squeals of brakes screeching to a sudden halt sounded. 

"Are you finished yet?" Spiderman growled in impatience as Marsh continued to feverishly pound code after code into the computer.

Above the two men the machine began to hum to life, its generator pounding against its casing as it exerted massive amounts of energy to activate the thing. The interlocking rings of the circular portal starting to rotate slowly, every other ring spinning in the opposite direction of its neighbors. Inside the center of the circle cascaded down like a curtain what looked like a pool of swirling blue and green liquid. But both men knew that it wasn't liquid that created the upright pond, but rather contorted space that connected and transversed multiple dimensional planes. 

"Yes," the frightened scientist said finally, cowering as he moved quickly away from the super villain, "But it'll be several minutes before the device is operable. The systems still need to warm up and the coordinates of your destination still need to be imputed." 

"And how do I impute my destination?" Spiderman asked plainly. 

"Right here," the scientist pointed as he scurried out of the other man's way. Punching in a series of numerical coordinates and pressing enter, Spiderman smiled secretly in anticipation for the result of his plan that was slowly beginning to come into his grasp.

"Is that it?" the arachnid then asked.

"Yes."

"Good…" Spiderman said in an emotionless tone, "Then your purpose here is done, Doc."

"Then I can go?" Marsh asked timidly in disbelief. Was the wall crawler going to really let him go? 

"Go?" Spiderman laughed as if the scientist had made a joke, cocking his head to the side in amusement, "I never said anything about you leaving here alive…" 

Marsh's eyes widened to the size of saucers at the villain's words. Speech was lost to him as Spiderman again picked him nonchalantly up off the ground by his lab coat's collar. "See ya, Doc," Spiderman said as his parting words before hurling the man carelessly through the same smashed window the scientist's partner had meet his own bloody end. 

Striding quickly to the shattered remains of the room's large window to see his bloody handiwork painted on the cold pavement far below, Spiderman was startled as a blur of green whirled past his vision, soaring high into the sky carrying a familiar bundle of limbs with it. 

Following the retreating form skyward, the web swinger growled under his breath. So they were here…

But before Spiderman could think of the ramifications of his revelation a sudden tingle at the base of his skull alerted him to a nearby presence. 

"You've gone too far this time, Insect… We don't know what you plan to use that machine for, but we're not going to let you," came a slightly angry voice from the threshold of the smashed down door of the lab. 

Turning in deliberant slowness to address the new arrival, Spiderman arrogantly stated, "You know, after awhile your threats just don't carry as much force. Especially after you fail miserably to stop me time after time, Cuddles."

"You're going to be eating those words after we're done with you," the newcomer snarled in agitation for Spiderman's infuriatingly calm facade. 

"Come and get me then…" challenged the masked man, cockily.

Leaping at the red and blue clad villain in a writhing mass of outstretched, snaky black psudopods, Venom's slobbering red tongue lashed the air like a whip. 

********

As Marsh spiraled out into the thin void of empty air five stories above the campus's concrete walkways, the man saw his life flash before his eyes. Tumbling in endless somersaults in a lethal death fall, a scream of fear managed to finally rip from his mouth as the ground rushed up to meet him. 

But as Marsh closed his eyes tightly together in terror, he suddenly felt a hard impact stun his right side. Believing himself to have just died in a massive splatter of squashed human remains, the scientist reveled in the fact he had felt no real pain except for the wind knocking blow of impact. But something wasn't right. He could still feel wind whipping around his body as though he was still flying through space. 

Snapping his eyes open in shock, he saw the campus's green lawn speeding far below his dangling feet. Uncomprehending of what had happened he finally noticed a set of firm hands supporting his body easily from beneath his armpits. Looking over his shoulder for an explanation to this phenomenon, Marsh cried out in happiness at who he saw. 

Carrying him through the air as easily as a bag of sugar, the wrinkled face of his savior smiled down at the browbeaten scientist, his bald egg shaped head gleaming in the bright sunlight. "Going down," the Vulture said with a grandfatherly snaggle toothed grin. 

Swooping gracefully down to the grassy lawns of the campus near an amassed group of police, the Vulture alighted from the air with a final beat of his metal bladed wings, gently placing Marsh onto solid ground. Too shaken to stand, the poor scientist collapsed to his knees weakly in the soft grass. 

"Thank you…" he managed to chock out gratefully as a small group of uniformed officers rushed up to him. 

"What is Spiderman after?" the Vulture asked urgently to the man as he stooped beside the scientist. 

"The dimensional transverser," Marsh shuddered noticeably as the words left his mouth in a flood of pent up emotions, "He…he made me activate it….I didn't want to, but… I don't know what it'll do exactly. It hasn't been tested yet…He made me do it…He killed my partner…" 

Finally breaking down hysterically in post trauma, the scientist hunkered into a shivering mass of raking sobs. The gathered police officers glanced at the winged old man with non concealed hatred for the wall crawler responsible for the shocked victim. Adrian Toomes shared the officers' feeling exactly, except he had the power to possible stop him. 

"This doesn't sound good…" the Vulture murmured angrily as he stood and glared at the gutted campus building in the near distance. Whatever the wall crawler was up to couldn't bode well for mankind in general. Kicking off the ground, the old man pumped the air with his razor bladed green wings before speeding off to the still smoldering hush of a building. 

************

Spiderman jumped gracefully away from the slashing mass of writhing black tendrils as his opponent snarled a toothy grin of razor sharp needles. "Fight us, wall crawler!" Venom cried angrily around his slobbering tongue that hung from the side of his mouth, infuriated that his prey had escaped him. 

Back flipping across the tiled floor to gain distance, Spiderman leapt in the air, swiveling his body agilely to face his symbiote clad opponent midair. Defying gravity in his attack, the masked man's hands whipped back at Venom as a shower of sticky white substance sprayed out from his wrist, covering the black and white colored man's face under a thick layer of webbing. 

Landing easily on his feet without a sound ten feet away from his blinded rival, Spiderman took a second to steal a glance from the corner of his eye to the humming machine on the far side of the room. The glowing pool of swirling blue material had begun to condense into a smoother surface like that of unpolished glass. Not much longer… But he had to delay his approaching enemies if he wished to succeed. 

Screaming out in rage, Venom viciously clawed the sticky strands from his webbed eyes, his head snapped back and gruesome teeth bared towards the ceiling. 

Whipping his head from side to side to find the brightly long johned man, Venom was suddenly pummeled from behind as a pair of a boots connected harshly with the base of his neck and shoulders. Crashing in a massive heap of corded muscles and undulating symbiote tendrils, Venom's muffled curses resonated up from around his smothered face. 

"Tag. You're it, Ugly," came a teasing, malicious voice as the weight on Venom's shoulders nimbly leapt away from his symbiote's momentarily stunned psudopods. 

Struggling to push himself to his feet from the vicious surprise attack, Venom stumbled several feet forward before finally finding his center of balance and turned to again face Spidey (even if a little bit worse for wear), much to the amusement of a certain wall crawling super villain. 

"I only wish I had a video camera right now, Sunshine. I could make a bundle off you from America's Funniest Home Videos," Spiderman quipped mockingly. 

But Spiderman's revelry was cut short as a group of new presences entered the room. Glancing towards the door, the web swinger saw the familiar faces (or masks for that matter) of the goldfish bowl looking headpiece of Mysterio complete with billowing purple cape and lime green jumpsuit; the flickering outline of a fired up Electro, shooting small lightening bolts from around his body that could have lit up ten city blocks by their voltage alone; and last but certainly not least, the unmistakable slithering adamantium tentacles of Doctor Octopus as his dark sunglasses and cereal bowl haircut came into focus.

And just to add good measure to the mix, the thin form of the aging Vulture landed gracefully at that moment on a perch that had once been the frame of smashed window of the lab. Every member of the assembled group sneered disdainfully at the masked man, hating him for every vile thing he personified and stood for. 

"Hail, hail the gang's all here," Spiderman sang haughtily, puffing his chest out with travesty at the gathering group, "So did the big bad Saintly Six decide to have a reunion without inviting me?--Oops, I'm sorry, did I just say six? I meant five if I'm counting right. I keep forgetting how your numbers keep dwindling after I keep killing you one by one every time you try to stop me. By the way, my deepest condolences for the Chameleon… Most people would have learned something by now, but you geniuses don't exactly qualify for the Guinness Book of Word Record's world's smartest bunch of guy in tights…I guess I can call you the Fearless Five or something equally laughable until somebody else goes down for the count. Then I can call you guys the Fatuous Four!"

Spiderman laughed arrogantly at his own joke to a great outcry of boiling anger from the five gathered men. 

"Keep laughing, Bug," Mysterio shouted bitterly through his helmet's mike, "All this senseless killing and terror ends today. We're going to avenge the Chameleon's death along with every other innocent life you've taken with your bloodied hands."

"Oh, you should write speeches for the president, Misty! Seriously!" Spidey chuckled tauntingly at the master of illusion's heroic speech. 

Despite his unconcerned wisecracks, Spiderman was only half concentrating on the group before him that could possibly ruin his whole plan. Stealing a glance from behind his gleaming eyepieces, Spiderman saw that the portal that lay only fifteen feet from his present position had finally achieved a silvery blue, metallic appearance, it's surface perfectly smooth and glassy. 

It was time…

"Well, peeps, I'd love to stick around and chat, but I have a one way ticket and my plane's about to leave," Spiderman called out before suddenly back flipping in a stunning display of gymnastics towards the metallic portal. 

Before any of the startled men could register what was happening or make a move to stop him, Spiderman's scarlet feet connected with the portal and disappeared into the swirling glass surface followed closely by the rest of his body. Spiderman's form was quickly swallowed by the wall of resistant swirling silver energy. Small waves rippling across the surface of the portal as the wall crawler's body completely disappeared from view. 

"Where did he go?" the Vulture cried in alarm as the ripples died away to nothing, leaving only a smooth silvery surface. But before anyone could speak a word, the rotating circle of rings began to suddenly lose their intensity and gradually grind to a stop. 

The silvery portal that had a moment before been a stable wall of materialized space, suddenly warped in budging masses, bubbling outward from the once smooth surface. Collapsing and rolling in and around themselves, the swollen space bulges coiled wildly, now unrestrained by the dead machine. 

"What's going on?" Electro called out worriedly, gaping at the volatile silver bubbles that looked as if they were seconds away from bursting like miniature volcanoes. Not allowing time for anyone to speculate, the warping portal finally succumbed to its contortions. Folding in on itself, the swirling silver material that had filled the space between the circle collapsed through the ring backwards, creating a swirling tunnel of rushing air in its wake. 

A rush of whistling air roared through the room deafeningly. Like a hungry black hole, the portal's tempest winds greedily grabbed for everything not nailed down in the university lab in a tornado of power. Pencils, papers, chairs, and even a whole desk lifted from the ground and swirled away into the gaping hole of transversed space. 

"It's sucking everything in!" Mysterio shouted as loudly as he could over the whipping wind as each man grasped for anything stable to grab onto. Unable to find leverage fast enough though, Electro suddenly found himself swept off his feet and hurtling through the air in a wild spiral towards the silvery worm hole. Crying out over the winds, the super charged man looked on in horror at the spiraling black hole. Small sparks of pure energy flared off his body in reaction to the sudden fear he felt coursing through his entire body like ice water. 

But before Electro could say any final prayers, a set of snapping pincers suddenly snagged his spinning body midair. Looking back, the voltage wielding man saw Dr. Octopus's adamantium tentacle snaking out to him to tether around his forearm in a powerful grip. Anchoring himself into the tiled floor with his other three metal arms, Octavius slowly reeled Electro back to safety as the man's body snapped helplessly at the end of his lifeline in the turbulent current of roaring wind. 

As Electro was pulled closer to his hunkered down allies, the winds the had supported and held his body aloft so easily in the air suddenly dissipated, dropping the startled man to the floor with a heavy thud. A still silence hung in the room as the silvery energy that had been concentrated inside the ring finally gave out and disappeared into nothing. 

"Ugh, what happened?" Electro mumbled shakingly as he hoisted himself onto wobbly feet. Looking about, he saw that the once spotless and neat lab now lay strewn in the utter chaos of up-heaved lab equipment and papers. Even chunks of plaster were sporadically missing from the room's interior, attesting to the worm hole's raw strength.

"The space continuum just reverted back to its normal state of existence," Dr. Octopus stated as he unwound his metal tentacle from Electro's arm, "It was a little more violent then I would have anticipated but the phenomenon was astounding in how the materialized space fell back into place on the dimensional plane, wasn't it?" 

"Where is that wall crawler?" Venom demanded single minded, ignoring the doctor's fascination with the utterly strange spectacle he had just been confronted with. All he cared about was finding Spiderman and nothing else. He had a score to settle with the bug. Snarling as his symbiote tendrils snaked and curled in the air around him in frustration, Brock whipped his head about for any sign of Spiderman. 

"He's no longer here," Octavius murmured in response to Venom's question, glaring behind his sunglasses towards the towering machine of interlocking rings. 

"Then we have to catch up to him before he gets too far away. We can't let him get away…not after this. He killed over eight people today in less then ten minutes in that explosion and then that poor man…" the Vulture trailed as he alighted from the smashed remains of the window where he had hung for dear life when the portal had suddenly converted into an endless of void of empty space. The old man still felt a twinge of guilt for not being able to prevent the death of Spiderman's victim who had fell five stories to a gruesome end just minutes before he had arrived. 

"No. You don't understand…Spiderman is no longer _here_," Dr. Octopus exclaimed, gesturing around him urgently with his natural arms. For his efforts, the good doctor received only blank looks from his fellow allies. 

Sighing in loneliness for being the only one who kept up on recent scientific developments, Octavious explained, "ESU has been receiving large amounts of grant money from private organizations to research in the development of trans-dimensional travel. Only a few days ago, the two scientists in charge of developing the system announced they had completed final construction of a device theoretically capable of such a thing…"

"That's what the man I saved said--something about a dimensional transverser," the aging Toomes interjected helpfully. 

"And this thing that stand before us does exactly what it name implies, gentlemen. It can literally transverse dimensional planes to connect separate universes, in essence, and grant the traveler passage between parallel realities," the stocky man with slithering metal tentacles said in a heavy voice. 

"You have got to be kidding," Venom voiced, accompanied with similar outcries from the others. 

"No, I'm not kidding. I never 'kid.' Spiderman has just used this device to transport himself into a parallel universe," Dr. Octopus related to the dawning comprehension of his remaining teammates, "Who knows what he's planning to do. The people of that dimension have no idea of what they're about to face."

"What do we do? We can't just let Spiderman get away. He could kill countless innocent people there with no one powerful enough to stop him," Mysterio stated helplessly, his cape fluttering agitatedly from behind his muscular shoulders. 

"We're going to have to go in after him…and soon," Octavious concluded sternly with authority, "There are too many lives on the line for us to do nothing." 

Nodding in a collective, unspoken agreement the men looked hesitatingly at the decrepit machine that stood silently in a hulking mass of metal at the far side of the room. Thinking of something, Electro asked falteringly, "What about the other dimension's Spiderman? What if he's just as bad as the one that just went there?"

There was a stinging silence as the five men looked at each other uncertainly. Finding his voice first, Mysterio stated slowly with dread dripping off every syllable, "Let's just hope not. Because if that dimension's Spiderman is anything like ours…then the whole world may be in danger…"

To Be Continued…

OK, just to clear things up before you drop a review (which you were already going to do anyway…right? Hint hint…) is to understand that this is not really an alternate universe fic. The save-the-day Spiderman we all know and love is making his appearance next chapter. This was to let you get the feeling for his alternate half's personality (basically the complete opposite of our Spidey.) And FYI for one of my reviewers for "Screams," MJ is going to be making a cameo in this fic as are the regular baddies of the Sinister Six… 

So tell me how you like this concept for a story and I'll get another chapter up soon. Signing out

-LAXgirl 


	2. Another?

Well, I guess I got a decent enough response to the idea of an alternate personality Spidey. Thanks to those who reviewed. This is actually kind of difficult and confusing to write! I can't wait to see how I manage to pull off the story later on when things get really wild! It's gonna be a trip! 

So here you go! Second chapter! Don't be scared!

Disclaimer: Spiderman and all other characters and alternate personalities (I guess…) are not mine. But that would be an interesting legal defense if I did get nailed for copyrights…

"I'm late. I'm late. I'm late," Peter Parker chanted quietly to himself as he dodged multiple pedestrians that flowed around him on the crowded streets of uptown Manhattan, "Professor Adams is going to have kittens if I show up late again for class…"

Jogging at a held back run, Peter hastened his way through the early morning logjam of business people heading to work, hoping those unfortunate enough to come in contact with his shoulder as he barreled past weren't too angry. His advanced physics class was scheduled to begin in less then five minutes and Peter was blocks away from even reaching ESU's campus. 

He would have probably been in the classroom already, notebook open ready to take notes and patiently waiting for his professor to start class, but a late night out web swinging through the city had prompted Peter to hit the snooze button on his alarm clock several times that morning. When he had finally drug his tired body out of bed, he had been startled to find he had only twenty minutes until class began. 

And here our frazzled hero was; rushing off late to class, unshowered, clothed in what he had conveniently found tossed on his apartment's floor from the day before, hair combed with only his fingers, and a pop-tart hanging half eaten from the corner of his mouth. 

To an innocent observer, one might have mistaken the young man they saw as he rush by in the crowd as a typical college student who had just spent a late night out with friends and eating pizza. If they only knew that same boy was the spandex wearing superhero known city wide as Spiderman who was trying so hard to simultaneously lead a "normal" life… 

Skidding around the corner, Peter nimbly dodged out of the path of an oncoming mass of tittering tourists, all gazing upwards to the misty tops of the surrounding skyscrapers. Sighing to himself in frustration for another split-second delay, Peter debated whether changing into Spiderman would be a warranted course of action. But he only shrugged the thought off. By the time he managed to find a private place to change into his costume and then web swing to class and then find yet another place to change back into civvies without catching the attention of some curious ESU students for finding their friendly neighborhood Spiderman visiting their college campus, it would have be just as fast to just use the good ol' fashioned mode of transportation known as walking. 

But as the young photographer rushed past a common downtown newsstand hung solid in a wallpaper of various magazines and newspapers, Peter caught the tail end of a news report over the seller's portable TV/radio. 

_"…Police have been deployed to the scene but squads already there have been meet with failure at trying to stop the perpetrator from taking hostages. There are an estimated twenty people in the bank, including tellers and customers, under the control of the criminal. There are unconfirmed reports that the person responsible for these events is the city's masked resident, Spiderman. It has been reported that he entered by using a small bomb of some sort; demolishing half the front of the bank and surrounding buildings…"_

Halting dead in his tracks, Peter's heart leapt into his throat at what he heard. Did he just hear right? Did he just hear that Spiderman was seen knocking over a bank? Rushing over to the flannel jacketed newspaper seller who was huddled to the far side of the booth, the boy called out in a slightly squeaky voice due to shock, "What's going on?"

"Looks like Spiderman is holding up a bank a couple blocks away from here. The TV says he has hostages too," the bearded new seller grunted as a response to Peter in a heavy Brooklyn accent, his eyes never leaving the tiny screen of his portable TV. 

Shaking his head in disbelief, Peter asked hurriedly as he leaned over the edge of the stand to crane his neck inside to see the TV, "Are they sure it's Spiderman?"

"That's what they're saying kid," the seller shrugged, "You know, I always thought that Spiderman was one of the good guys. I never really believed all those things the Daily Bugle says about him, but after this I'm not sure…" Tearing his eyes away from the screen for the first time to glance at the overly curious boy that was practically leaning flat over the counter of his stand, the man coughed gruffly, "You gonna buy anything, kid?"

Snapping out of his shocked trance, Peter jumped straight from off the counter at the man's warning tone. Not to be deterred though, the young man asked urgently, "Where's all this happening?" 

Scanning the unmade boy before him from head to toe skeptically, the man said as he thrust a finger out to point down the street, "Down five blocks on 23rd…" 

But before he could say anything else, the tussle haired boy took off down the street in the direction indicated at a speed faster then the seller had ever seen. 

Already half a block away, Peter thought dejectedly, 'Great. I'm going to miss another class. And to make my day complete, there's some imposter running around too! My day just can't get any better…'

Swerving into a nearby alley, Peter disappeared into the dark shadows behind an overflowing dumpster positioned near the end of the side street. Several moments later, the soft 'thwip' of webbing splashed against the side of the building. Another half second later, the brightly red and blue painted costume of Spiderman shot out of the alley into the morning sunlight. As the superhero shot through the concrete canyons of New York, the distant wails of police sirens echoed in the distance. 

************

Leaping nimbly from the end of his strand of webbing onto the cornice of a building, Spiderman looked down onto the street far below him in utter horror. In the T intersection of 23rd and Clayton, the building face of 'Alliance Banking' looked like it had taken the blunt of an all out war. 

Gaping craters marred the old building's brick face like an exploded minefield. But the worst was a gaping charred edged hole on the right hand side of the bank front, a mountain of chunks of brick laying beneath it. Shattered glass carpeted the sidewalk like freshly fallen snow from beneath broken windows all around. Even a nearby light post unfortunate enough to have been placed too close to the normally quiet, downtown bank lay in a ball of twisted metal as though it was nothing more then crumbled piece of paper. 

Twenty or more feet away, on the opposite side of the street, blockaded four police cars with ten or more police officers crouching warily from behind opened car doors, their guns drawn and aimed toward the bank's front doors. An ambulance sat idling nearby, its spinning siren lights mixed with those of the squad cars cast a kaleidoscope of colors off the fronts of the surrounding buildings. Howls of sirens screamed through the crisp, early morning air.

Another squad car lay upturned on its back like a discarded child's toy in the center of the standoff between the police and the front of crippled bank building. Milling behind temporary blockades set up by the officers, stood close to fifty curious New Yorkers, waiting to see a good show. 

Even from several stories up, Spiderman could hear the commanding officer shouting clearly over a loudspeaker into the battle scarred bank, "Spiderman! We know you're in there! We have the area surrounded. Come out quietly with your hands in the air or we will be forced to take drastic action!"

"Agh! No! They think it's _me _in there!" Spiderman cried to himself in dread. The last thing he needed for his shaky public reputation was to be labeled as a bank robber. "That's it…" he muttered as he vaulted himself over the wide avenue below him high onto the building's side, too far overhead to be noticed by the armed officers below street level, "I'm hiring myself a lawyer. There has to be laws out there about impersonating a superhero. And if there's not, then there should be! I could probably retire on the money I sue from all these guys passing themselves off as me."

Skittering across the building face, Spiderman found an open window and crept inside. Whoever was responsible for this was going to be meeting the _real _Spiderman in just a few seconds. And then he was going to see what it was like fighting a ticked off crime fighter who got only a couple hours of sleep the night before and who hadn't even had time for a cup of coffee from Starbucks. 

"Oh, yeah, buddy…You just wait. You'll be sorry. I'm not in the gentle mood this morning," the wall crawler murmured to the unsuspecting, mysterious imposter several stories below. 

********

Meanwhile several stories below, the mysterious imposter indeed waited, pacing the polished floor of the bank irritably, his boots' high pitched squeaking making the only sound above the background noise of police sirens and shouts from outside. His group of cowering hostages sat huddled together in a tight mass of limbs in the far corner of the bank lobby waiting anxiously for any sign of rescue. 

The interior of the bank was one of those old fashioned, turn of the century styles. High oak counters spanned the far left side of the room, polished to an antique shine from countless people over the years using it to transact money. Large desks of similar make, dotted the other side of the rectangular lobby. White marble covered the floor while several pillars spiraled upwards to the two story ceiling high above alone the one side of the wide room. Revolving doors stood in the center of the front of the lobby, in between two banks of fifteen foot high windows. 

Unfortunately, the once grand bank had seen better days. The whole right side of the room near the front was charred to a blackened crisp around a still smoking hole that had been punched through the building's front by a powerful explosion. Everything within twenty feet of that area lay burnt and upturned from the devastating blast. Several standing displays promoting from low interest rate loans and checking systems on the other side of the lobby lay twisted and burnt on the rubble strewn floor. 

In the far back corner of the bank, huddled the group of terrified employees and customers that were now the bank robber's hostages. Each sat helplessly, wrapped tightly in individual straight jackets of sticky white webbing their captor had secured them in when he had first broke into the bank in an unsuspected fiery explosion that had charred half the bank's interior. 

Rubble and shards of broken glass lay amidst several charred corpses that ay motionless among the devastating chaos of the bank who had been killed indiscriminately when a sudden small object had shattered through the front windows and suddenly exploded in a brilliant flash of heat and light. 

Many of the surviving victims' faces lay covered under a thick layer of soot and dirt, making the whites of their frightened eyes stand out in stark contrast to their blacked faces.

There was no sound or movement from the group of hostages except for the occasional murmured sob of fear from one of its female members. Their captor had already demonstrated what he would do if any of them made any move for escape or retaliation. 

The poor teller that had been their example lay unconscious off to the side, his head marinating in a pool of sticky red blood. His head sat like a crushed melon, it contents spilled across the floor in a small display of violence the masked man holding them captive was capable of. 

But what didn't make any sense to any of them, was that the man responsible for all this destruction and killing had not asked for any money or yet made any demands. He had only tied up the surviving bank staff and patrons and stood waiting until the police had finally arrived several minutes ago. But still he had not made any movement to steal any money or flee the scene. It was almost as if he was waiting for someone…

Every time the costumed man's irritable pacing grew close to the huddled group of frightened hostages, the whole mass cringed back as though it was a single organism. They had seen what that man would do without even the slightest provocation. 

Suddenly from outside, carrying over the howls of police sirens, a bullhorn distorted masculine voice called out, _"Spiderman! We know you're in there! We have the area surrounded! Come out quietly with your hands in the air or we will be forced to take drastic action!" _

Stopping his pacing, the blue and red clad criminal snorted disdainfully from behind his mask, "Drastic action my ass…those cowards won't do anything as long as I have hostages. How pathetic…"

Glancing down at the shivering mass of frightened hostages, the cold white eyepieces of Spiderman's crimson mask slowly scanned his victims as though they were cattle be lead away to the slaughterhouse. The group held a collective breath of tension as they felt he criminal's malicious gaze fall upon them, shivering uncontrollably in fear until his hooded head swiveled away to size up the next helpless soul to be caught in his sights. 

Coming to the edge of the trembling group, the Spiderman look alike towered above his prey saying in a tone of artificially manufactured, patronizing gentleness, "I'm sorry to inconvenience you folks like I have this morning but I assure you, you'll all be free to go as soon as my intended guest gets here. He's a little bit late as you can all see. And since I'm not the most patient person in the world by any measure, I'm going to have to give him a small incentive to hurry up…" 

Stooping down with inhuman grace to look eye to eye with one of the men cowering at the edge of the group of twenty or more hostages, the Spiderman double smiled evilly under his mask. Look how helpless they were; tied up in constricting cocoons of his own specially spun webbing. How easy it was going to be to overrun this city. Spiderman's victims wiggled vainly against the steel like strands as the man stared down at him. 

The man Spiderman had chosen had been one of the five unsuspecting tellers he had snared with a web line and had retched from behind their counters before any of them could realize what was happening and trigger the silent alarm system. The teller had to have been no younger then mid forties with thinning auburn hair and a chubby gut. 

Spiderman utterly reveled in how the poor, frightened man tried to edge away from him as he reached a gloved hand out to grip his shirt. And how he loved that look of complete helplessness in the man's terrified eyes as he lifted him as easily as a rag doll off the polished bank floor and dangled him several feet off the ground as he stood straight. 

"Spiderman, why are you doing this?" the dangling bank teller chocked out in squeaky intervals from behind the criminal's closed fist that held him aloft by the throat, "I always thought you were a good person. You've always saved and protected people. What are you doing?" 

A wicked laugh broke out from behind the black spider web etched scarlet mask. The startled man in the criminal's grasp shuddered involuntarily as the sadistic laugh sent cold shivers up and down his spine. 

"Is that true?" Spiderman asked in great amusement as his laughter began to subside, "Then I guess we're going to have to see if this superhero you love so much will show up in time to save you. I'm beginning to get a little bored waiting for him."

A look of surprise and incomprehension passed over the red faced man's features as Spiderman hauled him carelessly towards the bank of shot out windows along the front wall of the demolished bank. Stepping confidently to the first half shattered window he came to, Spiderman lowered the pitiful man down to shield his own muscular body. From the other side of the street, he could hear the police cocking their weapons warily as he came to a stop at the edge of shattered glass. 

Leaning his head close to the strangled bank teller's ear, the malicious wall crawler whispered, "Scream. As loud as you can. I want him to hear you…If you don't, I'll kill you right here and now and get somebody else who will. I'm sure he'll come quicker if I got one of those pretty ladies over there…"

The man's blood thundered in his ears, but he had still heard what the murder had said. Scream in terror or be killed. Was it really that much of a stretch to do as Spiderman ordered? Needing no more prompting, the man opened his mouth, intent on releasing the pent of cry of fear that had been welling up in him since the very beginning of this horrifying experience. 

But before any sound came from his tight throat, the man suddenly felt the arms holding him up in front of the sinful criminal become tense as if sensing something in the air. 

"He's here…" The teller heard mumbled from close behind him. 

Before he could realize what was happening or who Spiderman was talking about, he felt a gentle, wet slap of something on the tip of his right shoulder accompanied by a subdued 'thwip'. Unable to turn his head to see what the thing that hit him was, he suddenly felt a powerful yank on his shoulder. Retched from Spiderman's grip, the startled teller suddenly found himself spinning head over heels in the air. 

Yelping in surprise and fear as the world blurred and spun around him in a dizzying array, the teller slammed his eyes close. He felt himself flying through the air before he suddenly foun himself colliding with what felt like a solid wall of muscle. Startled, the poor bank teller was surprised to hear a calm voice as he felt a set of muscular arms catch his shivering form, stopping his speeding body abruptly, "Are you ok, Sir? Sorry I couldn't get here sooner. Traffic was terrible."

Opening his sooty eyes to see who was talking to him, the man wanted to scream in refreshed terror as the shiny eyepieces of Spiderman's red mask stared down at him. Either not noticing his expression or just choosing to ignore it, the web swinging hero landed nimbly on the polished floor of the bank lobby, his midair rescue of the man complete. 

Only seconds before, the masked man had entered unnoticed into the bank's large lobby through a conveniently placed air vent on the back wall of the room. Assessing the situation quickly as he skittered to the center of the room along the ceiling upside down, Spiderman had immediately seen the dangling form of a trussed victim held up by one of the front windows of the banking establishment. 

Snapping a strand of webbing down to snare the frightened victims shoulder, Spidey had pulled back hard, pulling the man from his captor's grip and sending him flying through the air. While simultaneously leaping down from his perch high above, the superhero had managed to easily catch the hurtling teller from a bone crushing landing. 

"Spiderman?" the man squeaked in disbelief and incomprehension, "But how? You just…Two Spidermen?" 

Finally, the traumatic stress the poor bank teller had endured for the last half hour or so became too much. His eyes fluttering up into his head, he slumped to the ground from between his savior's arms, fainting away into unconsciousness. 

"Yeah. It looks like I have an evil twin causing a lot of trouble for me today," the web swinger muttered tightly in response to the unconscious man as he gently placed the limp body on an un-scorched patch of polished floor behind a still standing desk near the huddled group of trussed hostages. Giving the amassed group of frightened victims a quick glance to make sure they were safe for the moment, Spiderman noticed a number of the people wincing away from him as he turned towards them. 

"Don't worry, folks. This will all be over soon. I'm here to help," Spidey said reassuringly in his most gently voice. Unfortunately, many of the terrified looks from their soot covered faces said his words held little to no meaning to the traumatized hostages. 

'Great,' the wall crawler thought angrily to himself, 'I bet Jameson just got twenty new avid Spiderman-haters added to the Bugle's yearly subscription list…' 

Breaking though Spiderman's thoughts came a strangely familiar masculine voice, "'Bout time you decided to show up. I was beginning to think you weren't coming."

Looking over his shoulder to the origin of the voice, Spiderman could only stare in shock at what, or rather, _who_ he saw. Standing confidently on the other side of the half demolished bank lobby, stood what could have been Spiderman's mirror image. He had known there had been reports of an imposter bombing his way into the building, but the web swinger was still taken aback by the sight of his exact double. 

Recovering quickly, Spidey called confidently, "Chameleon, is that you? It has to be. You're the only one capable of mimicking yourself to look so much like me. You've just sunk to an all time low, you know that? I thought you would have had a little bit more creativity then trying that same old, tired scheme of trying to frame me and destroy my reputation. The whole imposter plot's been driven into the ground and buried years ago."

"So that shape shifter is still alive here then? Interesting…" Spidey's look alike muttered to himself thoughtfully, much to Spiderman's surprise and confusion. 

"Wait a minute…if you're not the Chameleon, then who are you?" Spiderman questioned in confusion, taking a hesitant step closer to the imposter. 

"Let's just say I'm your better half," the other Spiderman said smugly, secretly enjoying toying with the superhero's mind. 

"Yeah right. Unless your some kind of clone, you're nothing but some cheap imposter running around in tights…Only I'll have you know there's a double standard when I wear them--then it's a superhero costume," Spidey snorted, warily sidestepping away from the group of tied hostages and into the center of the bank lobby to clear room to fight the imposter. A small tingle of his spider-sense at the base of his skull warned Spidey to be cautious with this stranger. The superhero knew he had to think of a plan quick. Something unspeakable inside the wall crawler screamed that this double was more then he seemed and was very dangerous. 

But before the wall crawler could form a plan of attack in his head to take the look alike criminal down, a sudden insistent sting from the base of his skull subconsciously shocked him into leaping several feet back as the squishy splat of something wet hit the ground where he had just been standing only half a second before. 

Looking down at the mass of white goo that lay in a small pile at his feet, Spiderman realized with a sickening start what had been launched at him. Stooping down to the pile, the web swinger slowly reached a shaking hand out towards it. 

'No…It can't be…webbing?!' Spidey's thoughts thundered in his head as he brushed one of his gloved fingers across the surface of the already congealing substance. 

"I assure you…I am no imposter. And I am no clone," the other Spiderman whispered in a dangerous tone of warning. As if to prove his point, the man peeled back the edge of his right glove, exposing the naked skin of his upturned wrist and lower forearm. At the base of the heel of his hand, there lay a patch of raised, scar tissue colored flesh; the undeniable proof of the inhuman, web producing spinneretts that lay hidden under a thin layer of flesh. To further his point the costumed man reiterated in a low voice meant only for Spiderman's ears, "This is no trick." 

"But how? How can you have the same powers as me?" Spidey demanded, now somewhat frightened by this mysterious double of himself. Subconsciously, he lowered himself closer to the ground, bobbing his head from side to side warily like an animal analyzing just what kind of danger the creature before him posed. An insistent tingle at the base of Spiderman's skull vibrated warningly as the other Spiderman spoke. 

"That's going to be my little secret for now." 

"Ok then, chuckles. Enough with the twenty questions. Just tell me; why are you doing all this?" Spiderman asked then, extremely suspicious but at the same time curious of this man. Could it be there was another person in the world with the same powers as him? But how would he have gotten his powers, Spidey wondered helplessly. There couldn't have been two cases of a genetically altered spider biting someone…could there?

Spiderman could almost see a sly smile spread itself out across the man's face even from beneath his crimson hood as he said plainly, "I just wanted to get your attention."

For a moment, Spidey didn't know how to process that. The wall crawler stood speechless, anger suddenly boiling in his chest. Exploding in disbelief, the web swinger cried, "You bombed your way into a bank full of innocent people just to get my attention? You killed people…just to get my attention?!" Venom tainted the normally calm and collected superhero's voice. 

"In a nutshell…Yes. It wasn't much fun though, if it makes you feel any better," the other Spiderman shrugged almost proudly. 

Teeth clenched so tight together in rage, Spiderman's jaw actually trembled under the pressure as he narrowed his eyes at his mirror image. Red flared before his vision. If there was one thing that made Spiderman lose his cool, it was the outright killing of innocent people. And to make that inexcusable crime worse to the web slinger, the crime had been committed by a murderous man proclaiming to be him: Spiderman, who in reality was only a young man trying to protect innocent people and make a difference in a cruel and merciless world. 

"You're…a monster," the wall crawler growled angrily as he leapt to crouch on the edge of a nearby desktop in agitation. "What do you want with me? What was so important that you did this?" he demanded, again bobbing his head like an insect subconsciously in readiness for action. 

The other Spiderman stood cockily, his feet planted firmly far apart beneath his shoulders and arms jutting akimbo to his body to rest on his narrow hips. Cocking his hooded head to the side, the imposter replied almost innocently, "Nothing…for now. I just wanted you to know who's going to make your life a living nightmare...then kill you."

"Oh, here we go!" Spidey exclaimed, back flipping to cling to the wall, trying to draw the man farther from the huddled hostages, "So what your story? What did I do to you? Everyone else seems to have an interesting take on why they hate me. Just ask Venom. He blames me for everything that's ever happened to him."

"You've done nothing to me directly," the other Spiderman replied emotionlessly, looking up towards the wall crawler to where he clung to the wall, "I just want your life."

"My life?" Spidey asked, his eyebrows knotting together in the center of his face under his mask, "What are you talking about?"

Chuckling to himself, the imposter called out, "That's going to be another of my secrets for now. But don't worry, you'll find out soon. I know _all _about you. All I need to do is get my little group of friends together, then we can have some real fun. I just wanted to give you the heads up…It'll make everything so much more interesting. I'll be in touch…"

Turning on his heels, the criminal Spiderman sprung like a coil to the wall of the bank lobby that stood unscorched from the initial bomb explosion from before. On the other side of the room, Spidey looked on in amazement as the costumed man's fingers and toes gripped he white washed walls and quickly skittered along the length of the lobby, just like he could. 

"Hey, wait a minute! You're going nowhere!" the masked superhero cried out after the retreating figure. Springing off the wall he had been stuck to, Spidey bounced and flipped in a beautiful display of accuracy across the rubble strewn floor of the bank to the other side. Coming out of a handspring on his toes, the web swinger jumped straight up towards the fleeing murderer. 

Snapping his wrist back, Spidey let a thick strand of webbing fly, intent on snaring his frighteningly agile double's ankle to pull him back to the ground and then web him up for the police to deal with. Unfortunately, the young hero's plan proved fruitless as his mirror image suddenly twisted his body away from the strand mid stride against the wall, successfully evading the webbing. 

"Nice try, Hero. But you are going to have to do better," the Spiderman costumed criminal snidely mocked over his shoulder, "I can do everything you can. So you're going to have to learn to beat yourself at your own game if you want to live."

Spiderman didn't quite know how to take that comment before the other Spiderman suddenly contorted his body in a wild twist and kicked off the wall to free fall towards the ground. In one fluid motion, his double quickly snatched a flat but indistinguishable object from some hidden pocket stowed in the red stripe that circled his waist and tossed it in Spidey's direction as he plummeted past his pursuer. 

"Hey!" was the wall crawler's only cry of surprise before a sudden explosion of light and concussion shock wave violently shook the air around his body. Startled, the web swinger felt himself lose grip of the wall. Blinded by the flash of pure white that left bright spots before his eyes, Spiderman suddenly found himself falling towards the ground. The explosion hadn't been one meant for mass destruction or to kill Spiderman but rather one to distract and blind him momentarily. And it had worked perfectly. 

If he had been even a fraction of a bit more prepared for that attack, Spiderman may have recovered quick enough to snap out a web line and slow his wild fall to the bank lobby floor. But the wall crawler hadn't and met the cold polished floor twenty feet below with the blunt of his left shoulder. Yelping at the stinging pain from the harsh collision, Spidey managed to catch himself in a roll. 

Laying stunned in a heap, the young hero felt a shower of plaster rain down on his momentarily debilitated body as the final subsonic concussion wave of the surprise explosion rolled away into the distance. Beyond the loud ringing in his ears, Spiderman could barely make out the distant shouts of voices nearing from outside the bank. 

"Ugh!" the web swinger grunted in pain as he hoisted himself to his knees groggily. Gingerly rotating his numbed shoulder as he stood, Spidey winced as stabs of pure white pain fired like lightening down the length of his left arm. "Where did he go?" Spiderman muttered, swallowing the pain as he snapped his partially tattered hooded head around to scan the now almost completely demolished bank lobby. 

Nothing. The imposter was gone, almost like a ghost. The only persons in the wide and high ceilinged lobby were the cowering and whimpering group of frightened hostages in the far corner of the room and the battered superhero. 

'Where did he go?' Spiderman wondered, startled, 'Nobody pulls a fast one like that…except for me. Minus the light show, of course.' 

But before he could worry the case any further, a loud, bullhorn distorted voice crackled the air from just outside the bank, "Spiderman! Surrender now! If you don't give yourself up, the police will storm the building!"

"Uh oh… Got to get out of here…" Leaping to the wall where the air vent he had entered through stood, Spiderman gave a last minute glance over the demolished bank lobby before disappearing away into heating system of the building. So many killed, and he hadn't been able to even apprehend the murderer. It was his fault he hadn't gotten there in time to save more lives. But it was sure the media was going to blame Spiderman none the less…but also for good reasons.

Seconds later, ten officers stormed through the gaping hole of the front of the bank, gun drawn and training around the room for any sign of retaliation from the suspected criminal, Spiderman. But all they found were the unharmed, whimpering hostages in the back of the lobby and several other unconscious bomb victims that were barely clinging to life under layers of debris near the explosion site. But no sign of the masked man blamed for the fatal bombing. Spiderman was gone. 

Later news reports would crowd the air waves screaming about the allegations and first hand sightings of the hostages of there being two Spidermen being seen. Some newscast posed the question if Spiderman had finally became a dangerous criminal and ganged up with another villain while others wondered if Spiderman had always been in fact two super powered men. Whatever the case, Peter Parker spent the rest of the day in his apartment, letting Spiderman lay low until the initial panic of the bank bombing died down a bit, wondering things much along the same lines. How could there be two Spidermen? Where could the other man have possibly gotten his powers--the same exact powers as his own?! What trouble was this new turn of events going to lead to? Peter didn't know, but his frighteningly similar double had said he would find out soon. Meaning he was just going to have to be on his toes and ready for whatever this guy planned to pull… 

How was that? A little confusing? Maybe… Anyway, I actually wanted to add another scene into this chapter but it would have made it too long. So the last of these 'leading up' scenes will be the next time around. So till next chapter…

-LAXgirl


	3. The Sinister Six Return With a New Membe...

Oh, this is just too much fun to write! I can't tell you people how much enjoyment I'm getting out of this story. Spidey's dark side is just so much fun to write about! Anyway, hope you like this chapter. 

MJ's finally in the picture, and let me tall ya, she's going to be playing a bigger part in this one then in any of my other stories before. This is gonna be the one where Pete and MJ's relationship is put to the test. He he he he *laughing evilly*…You want to know what's going to happen, don't you? Well, too bad! You're going to have to wait like everyone else! I just thought I'd give you something to sink your teeth into for now. 

So here you go! I worked long and hard on this chapter so enjoy!

Disclaimer: Spidey and all his affiliated posse aren't mine. 

Evening had fallen over the city of New York. The dark star covered skies above lay obscured by ominous clouds that rumbled with the threat of rain. A few drops of icy cold water already pattered in soft pinging intervals on the metal roofs of a particular abandoned warehouse complex on the lower east side of Long Island. 

The complex sat behind a heavy chain linked fence crowned by double helixes of barbed wire that surrounded about half acre of baron land. All of the warehouses lay under a thick coat of brownish rust from years of neglect. Most should have been condemned years ago, but for whatever reason had not. 

Several panes of the small windows that lined the upper part of the thirty foot sides of the warehouses were shattered from gangs of young kids throwing rocks through them. Tall weeds sprouted from between the oil slicked gravel that covered the land in between each of the looming buildings. 

Another low rumble of thunder rolled overhead as the first wave of rain finally hit the ground. A chilly gust of wind blew through the lonely complex of decrepit buildings, making the air cold enough to give a preview of the oncoming winter only a month or so away in the future. 

But in the last warehouse at the end of the first long row of deserted buildings, the small murmur of voices resonated out from within the darkened structure. A soft glow of light flickered out from one of the broken windows, creating a small beacon of brightness to shine out into the waterlogged night. 

Inside that empty warehouse, in the flickering light cast from a single swinging light bulb hung from a steel rafter twenty feet above, stood the shadowy outlines of a group of four men. Their dark shadows stood elongated and distorted against the inner walls of the building. But even distorted and warped, the shadows were inhuman and supernatural. Outlines of wings, a rounded head, snaking tentacles and a continually flickering and sparking form stood like silhouettes against the rusted walls. 

Scuffing his feet deliberately through the carpet of dust that had settled on the cold concrete floor of the building, one of the amassed members grumbled, "It's too cold tonight to be out in the rain. I should be home where it's warm. This is stupid. There are many other, more appropriate and comfortable places to hold a meeting like this."

"What's the matter, Vulture? The years catching up to you?" taunted the youngest of the group, his form constantly flickering from spontaneous charges of pure energy that crackled off his form and snaked through the chilly air. 

"Easy for you to pass judgment," growled the old man in the green suit of metal feathers and wings defensively, "You've shorted yourself out so many times with that energy of yours, Hothead, I doubt you have any brain cells left to register what cold feels like." 

"Watch it, ya' old geezer!" Electro shouted, sparks of lightening leaping from his body to singe the air. Electro knew one clean hit with one of his lightening attacks, he could be having fillet of Vulture for dinner- extra crispy. 

Glaring daggers at each other, the two men looked as if they were a second away from jumping at each others throats. 

"Gentlemen. Gentlemen," soothed a raspy voice as the man stepped forward, "There are more important things to worry about then this insignificant squabble of yours. There are larger issues at hand. Such as who summoned each of us here tonight." 

Giving one last nasty look at the old man, Electro addressed Dr. Octopus who had just broken up his potential fight with Toomes, "Yeah. I just found this note this morning on the door of my apartment saying to meet at this warehouse at midnight. I actually thought it was you, Ock. I thought maybe you were trying to get the Sinister Six back together for another crime spree." 

"I thought the same," voiced the last of the men assembled there. Stepping up to the circle of super villains in the center of the warehouse, Mysterio's purple cape fluttered agitatedly behind him as though it sensed its master's inner frustration. "But if it wasn't you, Octavius, then I want to know who called us here. It's already quarter after and there's no sign of this mysterious caller. Who could have known where we were able to be contacted? Do you think that the police are trying to set up an ambush to arrest us?" 

"Those fools…I wouldn't give the authorities that much credit. This meeting has to have been orchestrated by someone else," the not so good doctor frowned, his adamantium tentacles dancing to an unheard deadly tune through the air behind him. 

"We agree too," suddenly came a new voice just beyond the glow of the lone light in the looming shadows of the warehouse. It was an odd synthesized voice, almost as though two people were speaking at the same time, perfectly matching each other's inflections and emphasis.

Snapping around to face the origin of the voice, the group of convicted criminals were momentarily startled as a dark hulking figure of blackness separated itself from the shadows and stalked into the dim reaches of light. Illuminated by the light, the stenciled design of an outstretched white spider and two flaming eyes shined could be distinguished from the black wall of muscles that made up the newcomer's body. Below those demon like eyes patches, sat twin rows of razor sharp teeth from which a slobbering red Gene Simmons like tongue rolled and licked the air. 

"Venom?!" exclaimed Mysterio in disbelief, "Don't tell me you were contacted too."

"We were," answered the symbiote clad photojournalist, Eddie Brock, from around his drool dripping mouth, "We had nothing better to do tonight, and we were curious who would have been foolish enough to try reach us. Once we find this person, we intend to feast on his still pulsating organs." 

"Always the charmer, I see," the Vulture murmured quietly to himself. Even a mass murder such as Toomes still could get queasy at the thought of the graphic disembowelment Venom was known for inflicting on his enemies. 

"Well, he's not here yet," offered Electro to Venom as he edged warily away from the symbiote's wandering black psudopods. 

"And I'm becoming tired of waiting for this person to make himself known," growled Dr. Octavius, cutting himself into the conversation. Unable to stand being pushed out of the limelight of the group, the eight legged man snarled, "I am Doctor Otto Octavius! I will not be kept waiting like some insignificant peon! If this mysterious contactor does not make himself present within the next minute, I will leave!"

To exemplify his frustration and anger, the doctor's metal tentacles pummeled themselves violently into the concrete behind the chubby man's body, creating four craggy craters deep within the warehouse floor. 

Seeing one of Octavius' volatile temper tantrums brewing, the others quickly stepped back to put distance between themselves and Dr. Octopus's deadly tentacles. But before the deranged scientist could make any more threats or vent anymore of his frustration, an echoing masculine voice broke the rain pattered silence of the cavernous building. "I can see someone never learned that patience was a virtue." 

The voice had come from above. Somewhere from the dancing shadows of darkness above in the crisscrossing rafters that spanned the abandoned warehouse. 

"Who's there?" shouted Octavius demandingly, craning his head upward on a squat bull neck. 

"Patience. Patience, Doctor," soothed the man far above, "I'll tell you all in good time." It was immediately noticed by the rest of the super powered criminals that Octavius had not appreciated their host's reply. 

The consecutive hollow thuds of weight landing on metal sounded from above, the unseen man leaping as gracefully as a cat across the rafters. Finally the black form of a man became apparent as he stepped in front of one of the banks of windows, silhouetted by the slightly lighter backdrop of rain clouds from the other side of the partially shattered glass. 

"I'm sorry to keep you waiting, but I was only waiting for the last of my guests arrived," the man said as his dark outline stooped down to crouch on all fours on the thick rafter he stood on. There was something eerily familiar by the stranger's body language that the assembled group of criminals could not quite put a finger on. 

"Before we rip your spleen out and eat it, we want to know why you decided to contact us," Venom called out plainly, as though the act of ripping someone's spleen out and eating it was a common, everyday experience. 

"I'll get straight to the point. I assume we can all say that we've had ambitions of wealth and power? From my little background search I did the other day on each of you, I'd have to say so," whispered the shadow clad stranger to the group over the dramatic background rumble of thunder and heavy rainfall on the metal shell of a warehouse, "I agree that the only way to make it in this world it to take what you want by force. Unfortunately, I can't say your methods of doing this has actually been successful so far…" 

"You will be advised to chose your words carefully," Octavius warned dangerously from below, "We did not come here to be patronized by someone we do not even know."

"Of course…My apologizes," shrugged their host nonchalantly from his perch above, "Anyway, I want power and control just as badly as you gents do. Only I have a plan that will eliminate the one factor that has, without fail, stood in your own personal conquests and stands as a personal obstacle to what I want."

"And what would that be?" questioned Mysterio, the back of his long cape grazing the ground behind him as he leaned back to see the mysterious man high above from behind his obtrusively round and awkward helmet. 

"Someone that will not stand a chance against our combined power…Spiderman," the gathered villains' host said to the general murmured responses of hatred for the wall crawler that wafted up to the man far above. 

"We've already tried ganging up on him," growled the Vulture, angrily remembering past humiliations suffered at the hands of the web swinging superhero, "It's never worked before. Why should your plan be any better?" 

"Because I know secrets about him that none of you have ever or will never know. I know things to do to him that will make him wish he was dead. Things that would make his pathetically trivial heroic existence a living hell," replied the stranger enigmatically to the hushed group of men. Something in the dark manner of speech and tone of their host compelled the villainous group to listen silently to him, completely entranced by his words of cruelty and vengeance.

"If you are so smart, why do you need us?" demanded Dr. Octopus with a snarl. 

"Because I know there'll be others to deal with in the near future that will try to stop me. I think you will find them very…familiar. It's so annoying how they persistently come after me. I just can't have any fun when they're around," he answered with yet another hint of secrecy, "I want to toy with Spiderman and make his life miserable before I finally kill him. It'll be so much more fun that way, but I'll need some help to do it." 

"But what do you have against the wall crawler? You haven't said anything about that," Electro asked curiously. 

"He possesses the one thing I want more then anything: I want his life. Not just his death but his place in society in this world. With him gone, he gives me the perfect place to start an empire of power. No one could stand in my way here once he's gone. Then I can put myself in his place with no one the wiser to the switch. I could do _anything _then," the man whispered maliciously, already imagining the taste of sweet victory. 

"Ummm That's a little bit of a different reason then what I was expecting…" muttered Electro semi-sarcastically, several thousand kilowatts of power sparkling from his body as he pondered just how to take that, "Why do you want Spiderman's…life?" 

There came a subdued chuckle of slyness from high above as the stranger stood straight from his crouch. "Let me show you why…" he said before the slim form of the muscular man suddenly somersaulted from his perch on the rafter. 

Through the dim light of the single light bulb that hung from another rafter and the glowing radiance of Electro, the confused men standing on the dusty floor of the building could see the man twirl and flip gracefully through the air as though he were a high rise diver doing his routine. 

Then, fifteen feet above the ground, a streak of white flew up through the air to snag the underside of the rafter the gymnastic stranger had just leapt from. Sticking there like glue, the strand snapped taunt, it's weaver slowly bobbing to a stop on the elastic like material upside down a good seven feet above the ground in the very center of the startled super villains. 

Staring in shock, the startled criminals beheld the crimson and dark blue costume and mask of Spiderman. 

"YOU!!!!" screamed Venom savagely as he launched himself at the upside down, swinging body, "We will hallow you out and drink your blood!" 

"Paleeeeeze…" Spiderman exclaimed with a condescending sigh and roll of his eyes from behind his mask as the charging bulk of an irate alien symbiote and photographer rushed to meet him like an angry bull. Flipping upright from his strand of webbing, Spiderman somersaulted easily over Venom's head as he barreled past the wall crawler, snaky black psudopods whipping the air like blades. 

"Stop this now!" ordered Dr. Octopus suddenly as four metal tentacles whipped into view and each grabbed one of the struggling symbiote's limbs. Hoisting the thrashing man high into the air, the shorter man tossed Venom carelessly aside where he crashed unceremoniously to the floor at the other end of the building. 

"Stay out of this, Octavius," snarled Venom lividly as he leapt to his feet, "This is between me and the bug."

"If you had half a brain, you pathetic excuse of a ball of tar, you would realize this is not the Spiderman we all want to see begging for mercy at our hands before we kill him," the doctor shouted angrily, halting Venom from making another charge at the Spiderman look alike, "This couldn't possibly Spiderman. He is nothing more then an imposter." 

"For all that fancy college learning, Doc, you're wrong," Spiderman cut in, much to the irritation of the insane scientist. 

"What are you saying? You want us to believe you're really Spiderman?" cried the Vulture, his wrinkled, haggard face twisted in distain and disbelief, "That's impossible!"

"I guess this just destroys that saying that we all get wiser the older we get," Spiderman quipped snidely to the old man, putting his hands on his hips cockily. 

"Explain yourself then! We can see you have powers similar to the wall crawler, but you can't _be_ him!" Quentin Beck, aka Mysterio, cried in frustration, his cape billowing behind him dramatically. The whole situation was getting out of hand and could at any minute break out into a full scale super powered slugfest. 

"I _am_ Spiderman," emphasized the double slowly, "But I'm not from this dimension. I'm an alternate version of the Spiderman you know. I came here through a machine called the Dimensional Transverser from a parallel universe two days ago."

"You're kidding right?" sneered the Vulture, totally unconvinced by the explanation. 

"No. I don't think he's lying," Dr. Octopus broke in with interest as he readjusted his dark sunglasses on his nose out of habit, "I've heard of there being such a device constructed. It's at Empire State University, right here in New York city. There was a press release several days ago stating that the scientists developing it had just finished final construction of the device. But trans-dimensional travel is still in its infancy. There wouldn't have been any actual testing complete yet."

"I just didn't feel like waiting around for those scientists to wasting ten years doing meaningless tests on it before starting human testing," Spiderman explained to the stunned group of villains. Grinning in sadistic pride of his crimes, he added, "Unfortunately, one of the two won't be doing anymore research, I'm afraid. He had quite a nasty spill out a window from several stories up…"

"We still don't believe you," hissed Venom, hot drool dripping from the corners of his mouth in massive globs that fell in thick splats on the concrete floor, "This is a trick. You smell just like the wall crawler. The symbiote knows your scent. Your story was interesting but utterly absurd. Did you really think we were going to fall for some fairy tale like that? What were you trying to do? Get us to let our guard down so that you could capture us? We should torture you till you scream for mercy before eating your heart out as punishment for thinking you could trick us." 

"He's got a point," Electro pointed out over the fallen hush of the warehouse as rain continued to patter loudly against the metal hull of the building, "Who says this isn't the real Spiderman trying to dup us into thinking he's someone else. The bug's already pulled things like this before to catch us." 

"Hold up a second, boys," Spiderman said calmly as he held both hands up in a mock sign of surrender, "Let me ask you; did any of you hear about that little bank bombing this morning?"

"Yeah, five people were killed in that explosion," recalled Mysterio warily, trying to understand what that had to do with anything. Finally, the illusionist remembered another part of the story, "Wait…There were reports of two Spidermen. Are you saying that was you?" 

There was a momentary pause from the five gathered criminals as they each in turn looked to the Spiderman look alike that stood in their midst. Evil laughter sounded from behind the scarlet mask before he finally whispered in a low tone, "I wanted to get my other half's attention before everything went to hell for him and this city. He seems to have such a sore spot about killing. It's so pathetic. I hate to admit even having any affiliation with him. No wonder you guys can't stand him and his wastefully heroics." 

Spiderman's comment was met with some, needless to say, surprised looks from the group. Reactions ranged from unreadable blank expressions (Mysterio), to narrowed eyes of doubtful wariness (Vulture), to grim frowns of contemplation (Dr. Octopus), to a classic drop jaw, wide eyed stare of disbelief (Electro). 

"Are you saying you're not a…hero, for lack of a better word?" asked Mysterio in a whisper. 

"As far from it as any of you guys winning the Noble Peace Prize," was the master of illusion's reply. Cocking his head to the side slyly, Spiderman whispered like the devil himself bartering for a soul, "So what do you guys say? Join me and we can be running this city in less then a week. Minus one pesky superhero wannabe of course. I can become your best buddy if you let me. Why fight each other when we can work together and rule the world? Once my insignificant other is out of the way, the rest of these "heroes" that seem to plague your dimension will be nothing but child's play to our combined forces. Think of all the wealth and power we could have. Isn't that what we all want? We could be gods…" 

There was another moment of tense silence as Electro, Vulture, Dr. Octopus, Mysterio, and Venom all exchanged glances. In each of their eyes shined the same unspeakable question: Were they hallucinating? Was Spiderman actually asking them to join up with him and help him destroy their worst enemy? 

Breaking the soft, rain pattered silence, Dr. Octopus spoke in a dangerous tone, "It is only out of sheer curiosity that I will agree to hear your plan. I want to see that insect suffer and not without myself being part of it. But be advised; if I find out that you have tried in any way to deceive us, I will rip each of your appendages off one at a time then leave what's left of your twitching body to my associates to do with as they please."

"I can see we're going to get along great, Ock," Spiderman replied, snidely ignoring Octavius' threats. Swiveling his hooded head to glance in the direction of the other villains, Spiderman asked plainly, "And what about you guys? Interested in filling in the last couple spots for the new and improved 'Sinister Six'?"

Again looks were exchanged. Electro's outlined flickered nervously with small sparks of energy as his eyes locked with what he assumed was Spiderman's own beneath the gleaming white eyepieces of his mask. "I guess I'm in…" the human powerhouse muttered, subconsciously shivering under the blank stare of the wall crawler. Something unspeakable screamed in the electrified man that this newcomer was more dangerous than any of the other criminals and mass murders gathered there. 

Cocking his head to look at the Vulture next, Spiderman questioned, "And what about you?" 

Narrowing his wrinkled eyes at the costumed man, Toomes rasped, "There are only two things in life that I care about: money and revenge. And your plan encompasses both. I'm in."

"And I," Mysterio conceded with a nod of his round head as he grabbed a handful of his fluttering cape and swept it across his body with dramatic flare, "Spiderman will never stand up to all of us."

Venom's demonic white eyes glared at Spiderman in silence. The wavering black tentacles of the symbiote slowly undulated the air as if in indecision. Growling through his needle filled mouth, Venom snarled, "We do not want power or money, just Spiderman's death. We have laid claim to the bug's still beating heart a long time ago. You may keep you blood money, but we will help destroy Spiderman."

"That's what I like to hear," Spiderman chirped with sadistic mirth, clapping his gloved hands together in a show of finality. Low thunder rumbled overhead at that moment, as if sealing the deal. 

"Uh…One question though," Electro spoke up suddenly to the questioning glances of the others, "What were you talking about before when you said there were others we'd have to worry about? Did anybody else come to this dimension with you?"

Another roll of thunder crashed from outside in the turbulent stormy night. Bobbing his masked head agitatedly at the question, Spiderman noticeably tensed. Taking in every one of the villains with a seeping glance of his shining bug eyes, Spiderman whispered over the pounding of rain on the metal hull of the warehouse, "Your own alternate versions…" 

******** 

Mary Jane Watson glanced absentmindedly out of habit at the passing display window of the Sears department store she and Peter strolled past. The mannequins on the other side of the thick glass of the display were dressed in varying combinations of the same style of clothes in the latest fall color combination; red and orange. The mannequins had all been positioned so that it looked like a group of friends were walking through a park, the backdrop of a multicolored leaf-strewn path completed the image, it hanging against the far back wall of the display. 

"Aren't those colors pretty together, Peter?" MJ asked, wrapping her arm affectionately into Peter's so that the two walked side by side, joined at the elbows. There was a moment of silence before MJ realized Peter had zoned out and hadn't even heard her. Glancing up, she noticed that distant look in his blue eyes she was so used to that said he was a million miles away, lost in thought. 

Waving her free hand only a few inches in front of his nose up and down feverously, Mary Jane called out playfully, "Hello! Earth to Peter. Come in Peter Parker!" 

"Huh? What were you saying?" the young man startled, breaking himself back into awareness. Sighing, Peter muttered, "Sorry about that. I was just thinking."

"Obviously," she smiled, giving him a playful gab in his ribs that lay protected under Peter's heavy black pea coat with her elbow. But instead of receiving any reaction from Peter, MJ saw that he again looked forward to stare down the street. Frowning at his almost sad face, MJ ventured, "Are you still worrying about that bank bombing yesterday, Tiger?" 

"Yeah," came his bland response, hanging his head to stare at the ground as the two continued walking down the busy downtown streets of Manhattan, "I…I don't know what to do or even think about all this--I mean this guy looked exactly like me." Helplessness tainted the boy's voice as he tore his eyes away from the still wet sidewalk from the rainstorm the night before and looked into Mary Jane's green eyes, imploring nonexistent answers. 

"So he had a good Halloween costume. That doesn't mean anything. He's just another maniac that wants to ruin your reputation…" 

"No. MJ, you don't understand. This guy was sticking to the walls just like me! He could shoot webbing!" whispered Peter back to her, trying to keep his voice low enough so that none of the passing pedestrians that shared the sidewalk with them could overhear their conversation of the city's newest most wanted suspected criminal. 

"Peter, are you serious?" she exclaimed in disbelief, "Could there be another person out there with the same powers as you?"

"I…I don't know. I just don't know," the young photographer murmured quietly, "I mean, the whole idea of another person being bitten by a genetically engineered spider is just too much to believe. Do you realize the odds of that happening? But even if there is another guy out there with powers like mine, why did he want my attention so bad that he killed all those innocent people in that bank?"

Unable to give an answer, Mary Jane could only give Peter's arm a reassuring squeeze. Flipping her long red hair from off her shoulders to hang down her back in contrast to her knee length hunter green coat, MJ pondered the situation. She had heard all the news reports from the day before. Even the day after, the bombing was still the top story of every news station and paper in the tri-state area. She knew there had been reports of two Spidermen being seen at the bank, but details were still up to debate and speculation. 

The fledging model/actress may have had the biggest inside scoop to the story, but Peter had revealed nothing to her the night before when she had seen the first report and immediately called to see if he was alright. Even over the phone, MJ could sense Peter had been distant and lost. She knew he needed to talk and sort out his problems, but he had only repeated time after time despite her persistent nudging that he was fine and would talk it over with her the next day over lunch. But something in Peter's voice told MJ right then and there that he was not going to reveal everything, no matter how much she wanted him to confide in her. 

"What did he say to you?" she asked curiously, "Did he say what he wanted or why he was doing that?" 

Peter didn't answer her immediately. Unbeknownst to him, MJ had been right the whole time that he was not prepared to tell her everything. Even several months since MJ revealed her knowledge of his secret identity as Spiderman and the two had become an official item, Peter still thought their relationship together was potentially dangerous to Mary Jane's safety. The last thing he wanted to do was to put the love of his life in harm's way. 

"Ummm No. He didn't say anything to me," Peter muttered unconvincingly to the gorgeous red head that hung from his arm. 

Glaring at him skeptically, MJ said, "Peter…I know you're not telling me everything." The guilty look that crossed over the boy's face at that moment proved MJ's point without her having to say anything else. Suddenly stopping dead in her tracks, Peter ungracefully stumbled several paces forward before swinging around from his momentum on their hooked elbows to stare back at her. 

Looking him straight in the eyes, MJ whispered quietly to him, "I know you're not telling me everything, but I'm not going to push you. I know you'll tell me everything when you're ready. Just promise me, Tiger, that you'll talk to me whenever you need to. I want to help you out, but I can't if you won't let me. I know you don't want to get me involved with your…night life, but you can't keep me in the dark forever. I want to help you, Peter. I'm here for you. Just please come and talk to me whenever you decide you can."

Peter gazed into those brilliant green eyes that burned into his soul, contemplating what Mary Jane was saying to him. Deep down he knew he couldn't involve her. It was too dangerous. Even still, he took a deep breath and whispered his placating lie, "I will. I promise, MJ, I'll tell you everything. But just not now."

"That's all I need to know," she smiled back at him, convinced by his sincerity. Starting up again at a slow walk, the two continued down the crowded downtown sidewalk in silence. As they walked together, Peter could feel that distinct feeling of guilt welling up in the pit of his stomach. He hated lying. But it was for MJ's safety, he kept rationalizing. She didn't need to live her life burdened with Spiderman's problems. The less she knew, the safer she was. 

Turning a corner, the couple walked in silence before Peter remembered something and exclaimed, "Oh, MJ! If you don't mind, could we make a quick stop over at the Bugle before going to lunch? I need to drop off some photos."

"I don't care," she smiled and in a teasing tone added, "You probably need the money, don't you? Landlord giving you grief about past rent?" 

"More than you know…" he smiled back, forgetting of Spiderman's problems. He would worry about them later. Right now, he was determined to enjoy his day out with his girlfriend. "It's not too far from here." 

Cuddling closer to him as a large mass of pedestrians spilled out from the mouth of a subway entrance and flowed around the content couple, MJ replied, "That's fine. Even if its cold and rainy today, I like walking around with you. It's be a nice sidetrack. I've always wanted to see the inner workings of a newspaper. It's not like we're in a hurry to go anywhere or meet anybody today…" 

*********

Peter Parker stalked down the narrow walkways that separated the closely packed desks of the Daily Bugle city room. He walked with an arrogant stride, shoulders set back and chest puffed out proudly from behind his solid black sweater and jean coat. Flicking away a comma of dark brown hair that had fallen over his eye, Peter scowled the bustling newsroom. 

There at the far end of the long room, Betty Brant sat at her secretary desk just in front of the door to J. Jonah Jameson's office. Even from half way across the room, Peter could see her talking urgently into the receiver of her telephone, rapidly tapping the tip of her pen on a stack of papers agitatedly as she did so. 

Letting a sly smile creep across his face, the young photographer pushed his way past a small group of milling reports to stood in his way, almost making one of them drop his steaming cup of coffee on the floor as Peter shoved past. 

Not paying any heed to the angry yell warning him to watch where he was going, Peter slid gracefully up beside Betty's desk and sat himself comfortably on the edge of the meticulously organized desk. Glancing down at the busy secretary, Peter could hear the muffled murmur of speech drift up to his ears from the receiver. 

Looking up to the waiting photographer while flashing a smile, Betty shot her pointer finger up into the air in the direction of the ceiling, pleading Peter to hold on for a few moments while she finished. Pulling the receiver a few inches from her mouth, Betty mouthed silently, "One minute. Important call."

As she glanced back down to the legal notebook before her and jotted down a few more notes across the etched lines, Peter's face contorted in an angry scowl and narrowed eyes. No one made him wait…_ever_. She had no idea of who she was dealing with.

Reaching his hand out across the desk, Peter's pointed finger crashed down on the cradle button of the phone, abruptly ending Betty's phone conversation with a sharp 'click'. 

"Hey! Pete, what're you doing!" she demanded in surprise, snapping her head up to stare at the young man perched on the edge of her desk. 

Peter's face retained its death stare of disapproval a moment longer at the startled receptionist before slowly melting into a forced smile of politeness. "You can get back to your phone conversation right after you tell me where Jameson is," he rasped forcefully, leaning over the desk top to come eye to eye with Betty, his face only a foot away from hers. 

Taken aback by her friend's uncharacteristic manners and becoming increasingly uncomfortable by Peter's deliberate invasion of her personal space, Betty stammered, "He's coming back from a meeting…he should be back any--"

"Parker?! Is that you?!" bellowed a sudden voice over the loud background noise of the city room. Glancing over his shoulder with an annoyed frown, Peter saw the form of the Bugle's grouchy editor bee lining towards him from across the room. 

Alighting from the corner of Betty's desk, Peter strided over to meet Jameson halfway while calling out, "Just the man I wanted to see."

"Good, cause I've been looking for you Parker!" Jameson snarled nastily, puffing a large cloud of cigar smoke from the corner of his mouth to billow up and obscure his grimacing face in a haze smog, "I want to know why you haven't had any pictures of that wall crawling menace, Spiderman, lately. I don't know if you're aware of this, Parker, but he just killed five people yesterday when he robbed that bank downtown! And I had no pictures to go with the story. We had to use an old print from two months ago! Do you know how bad that is? People want new pictures to go with their stories, not something they've already seen!"

By this time, the irate editor had worked himself into an even greater tizzy then normal and was shouting a full lung capacity within an inch of the young photographer's stony face, his ever present cigar mere centimeters from grazing Peter's nose with its smoldering ashes. 

Wrinkling his nose up in disgust and insult, Peter's eyes flared with barely held back anger that boiled beneath his skin. Checking himself against the urge to snap the old man's head around backwards with one swift punch to his jaw, the boy gritted his teeth together. How dare this grizzled old man speak to him this way. He was going to deserve everything that was coming to him. But Jameson could wait. He had bigger fish to fry first, and Jameson was necessary. 

Mentally bumping Jameson to the very top of his list, Peter suppressed a growl and stated very slowly in a low voice while Jameson paused for breath, "If you mind getting out of my face and shutting your big mouth for one second, then I'll show you what I decided to bring in to you today."

Not expecting this sudden show of backbone in his normally passive freelance photographer, the editor was startled into silence as he stared wide eyed at Peter. 

Giving a sly smirk of dominance, Peter pulled from his black backpack that was slung from one shoulder, a folder that he tossed carelessly at the older man with a flick of his wrist. Fumbling for the folder as it crashed against his chest, Jameson managed to catch it before it fell to the floor. 

Partially recovering from Peter's sudden disrespect, the cigar smoking editor, torn away the front cover of the folder with a huff. There was a moment of silence as his eyes widened, his greedy eyes scanning the small stack of photos he found inside intensely. Shifting through them almost in disbelief he muttered in awe, "Parker…These photos…They actually show Spiderman crushing in some guy's skull!"

"I take it you like them…?" the young photographer whispered with a smirk. 

"Like them? Parker, these are probably the best photos you've ever brought in of that mask wearing criminal! Now I can destroy his name for good!" Jonah exclaimed almost joyously, "I'll give you two hundred for all six of these." 

Turning towards his office still staring transfixidly at the incriminating Spiderman pictures with the biggest grin anyone in the history of the Daily Bugle had ever seen on Jameson's normally scowling face, the editor once again shuffled through the photos as if they pure gold. 

"I want three times that," came a demand from behind the editor's retreating body. 

Thinking he had misheard what Peter had just said, Jameson slowly turned back to the young man with a raised eyebrow of surprise. "What's the matter, Parker? It's your normal freelance pay. Two hundred is the standard," he said from around the cigar that hung from the corner of his mouth. 

"Six hundred, Jamie. Take it or leave it. I'm sure some other newspapers like the Daily Globe would pay me even more if I took those pictures there," Peter grinned slyly, knowing exactly how much the editor hated that rival paper and how badly he wanted those Spiderman pictures. How he absolutely loved toying with people…

Glaring openly at the boy, Jameson snarled as he glanced again down at the graphic 8x11 glossy photos of a helpless bank teller's death at the hands of Spiderman. He wanted these pictures now more then anything else. They showed without the slightest doubt that the tight wearing wall crawler was, like he'd been trying to tell the city for months, a dangerous cold blooded killer He knew he couldn't let Peter sell them to another paper. 

Huffing in defeat, the aging man hissed, "Fine. Six hundred…"

"Great," Peter grinned with a small chuckle of victory towards the seething editor, "I'm sure these will make Spiderman everyone's number one enemy…" 

*********

"I'll only be a few minutes, MJ," Peter reassured as he lead the red head cautiously through the teeming city room of the Daily Bugle, "I just need to drop off some photos from some charity concert and then we can go to lunch." 

"Wow," Mary Jane whistled in amazement as she took in the bustling newsroom and all its hurried writers and reporters scrambling to finish their stories before their deadlines. "This place reminds me of a bee hive with how busy these guys are…" she observed as a group of reporters hurried past them. 

"Yeah…and wait until you meet the queen bee. Jameson's bark is almost as bad as his sting," Peter joked as Betty Brant's desk came into view. Nearing it, Peter gave a little wave as he and MJ stepped up beside the young secretary who tapped away feverously at her computer. 

Looking up at her guests, Betty's normally smiling face sagged into a frown as she saw Peter. "Thanks a lot, Pete," she growled at him as she swiveled in her computer chair and thrust an accusing finger at him, "I just lost a great scoop for an expose I'm working on that could have gotten me out of this secretarial job. Because of your rude interruption, my source won't return any of my calls." Huffing, she wheeled her back to Peter to again pound away angrily at the keyboard. 

Totally confused, Peter gave MJ a perplexed look. "Ummm, Betty. I don't know what you're talking about," he muttered in confusion. 

"You know exactly what I'm talking about. You came in here less than fifteen minutes ago and _rudely,_" emphasizing the word with venom, "interrupted my phone call."

"Betty, I just got here," insisted the perplexed photographer, his hands outstretched to the side in helplessness. What was she talking about?

Glaring out of the corner of her eye, the angry receptionist was about to say something else just before Jameson decided to emerge from his cigar smoke clogged office. Puffing a plume of smoke from around the thick roll of tobacco sticking from his mouth, the surly editor locked gazes with Peter. Snorting twin jets of smoke from out both nostrils angrily as he stalked towards the young man, Peter had the sickening feeling he was suddenly in the path of a charging bull. 

"Parker? What the hell are you doing back here?" he growled irritably as he towered over the startled photographer, "I've had enough of your disrespect for one day! If it wasn't for those Spiderman pictures you just sold me, I would fire you right here and now! No one talks to me like the way you did before!" 

"What are you talking about?" Peter cried in exasperation, now becoming somewhat frightened by all this. "I just came here to sell you some pictures of that charity concert the other day in Central Park! I haven't sold you any Spiderman pictures for about a week!"

"Like hell you didn't!" Jameson barked in Peter's face, "I just paid you six hundred dollars only fifteen minutes ago for those great pictures of Spiderman being the murdering fiend I've always said he is! I'm not going to pay you for anymore pictures!"

"What pictures are you talking about?" Peter asked timidly, "I already said I haven't sold you any Spiderman pictures lately."

"I'll show you which ones I'm talking about," the editor hissed in determination as he disappeared into his office and emerged only seconds later with a manila folder clasped in his burly hand. Shoving the folder at the boy's chest, Jameson waited quietly as Peter leafed through the prints. 

Peter's eyes grew wide in horror as he scanned the six glossy colored photos. The photos were from the bank bombing the day before and were arranged in chronological order. The first couple showed two different angled shots of Spiderman holding a struggling bank teller several feet off the ground by the throat, the man's face a vivid shade of blue and foam frothing at his mouth. The next two were of the brightly dressed wall crawler violently twisting the man's neck so that it faced straight behind him, and then one of the costumed man's clenched fist in the motion of hammering down against the unidentified teller's skull. The last was of Spiderman standing over the fallen body that lay at his feet, a dark puddle of blood pooling around the masked killer's scarlet booted feet. 

"Oh, my god," Peter cried, covering his mouth with his hand, shocked and appalled at what he saw on the glossy paper spread out in his hands. Horror clenched his stomach as Jameson grabbed the photos back from him. "Mr. Jameson, you can't run these pictures!" Peter exclaimed, "This isn't Spiderman! He would never do anything like this! This has to be that imposter Spiderman that bombed the bank yesterday."

"Listen, kid," the editor growled shoving his finger in Peter's face dangerously, "I'll make the stories and the headlines and you just get me the pictures. You didn't seem to have this voice of conscience when you sold them to me before! And anyway, I've already sent down orders for those pictures to be on the front page of tomorrow's morning edition." 

"But it wasn't _me_!" Peter cried in frustration as Jameson turned and stalked away across the city room without even hearing the boy's final attempt at convincing him of his innocence. No one in the bustling newsroom seemed to take any notice of the flustered young man. Wheeling around to look at MJ who had stood on the sidelines the whole time listening, Peter looked as if he was about to cry in frustration. 

"What's going on, Tiger?" MJ asked worriedly, hurriedly walking up to where he stood staring into space in shock. 

"I don't know!" he wailed helplessly, "It's like some Twilight Zone episode! Jameson thinks I just sold him some pictures of Spiderman killing someone from that bank yesterday!"

"But you were with me all morning," MJ confirmed as Peter's perplexed look deepened,

"This can't be happening…" the confused boy muttered, fear tainting his voice, "Why do they think It was me though? No one else was in that bank to take those pictures except for me, the hostages, and…" Trailing off, Peter felt his stomach drop to his feet, realization hitting him harder then one of Venom's right jabs to the jaw. 

"What is it?" MJ asked in concern, to Peter's unhearing ears.

Staring away into space, Peter shook his head in disbelief. "Oh, my god…He looks like me…" the boy muttered in shock as understanding fell over him, "He just doesn't have the same powers as me,…he _is _me."

Through Peter's head echoed his murderous double's words. _I just wanted you to know who's going to make your life a living nightmare, then kill you…I know _all _about you…You're going to have to learn to beat yourself at your own game if you want to live…_

************

Oh, no! Things don't look good for our hero right now. Things can't possibly get any worst, right? WRONG!!! Peter's little white lie to MJ before is going to get her into a heap of trouble later on…Evil-Spidey's moving in with the other bad asses of NY, but where's the good versions of Spidey's enemies? Guess we'll have to wait till next chapter…but it may be awhile though. "Screams of the Spider" is getting a little lonely and I need to give equal attention to both my babies. So drop a review and I'll see you around later!

Signing out

-LAXgirl


	4. Confrontations

Ugh, I'm sick of school! I need a vacation! And what do ya know, I'm doing just that next week for thanksgiving! Can anyone say 'Florida here I come!' I am so coming back with a tan. But anyway, while I'm away, I plan on devoting some desperately needed writing time on my fanfics. So hopefully, by the time I come back, there'll be another chapter for "Screams of the Spider" _and _"Reflections." But don't hold me to that…^_^ 

So enjoy as I put Spidey through the ringer as he finally meets five of his worst enemies…

Disclaimer: Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously without permission by Marvel comics and Stan Lee. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. (Now try and beat _that _disclaimer…) 

__

************

"Police are still releasing no new information about the bank bombing that occurred two days ago which claimed six lives; one of the victims killed at the hands of the now wanted, Spiderman. Eye witness reports and bank security cameras from the scene have confirmed past allegations that there were two men at the scene dressed as Spiderman. Authorities have made no definite statement whether the murder was committed by the real Spiderman or by the imposter."

"Both men are wanted by the NYPD for questioning and a warrant for Spiderman's arrest has been issued. According to information that was released by the authorities, both men displayed the same wall climbing powers Spiderman is known to possess. Until more facts of the incident are known, the police are encouraging people to stay in their homes and to not venture out into the streets. New York has been put on a citywide alert for Spiderman. Police are asking anyone with information on Spiderman's or the look-alike's whereabouts to contact them at 555-555-555…"

The anchorman's voice turned into a monotone drone as Peter turned his back on the television with a disdainful snort and tiredly walked to the set of windows that stood along the far side of his apartment. Stepping up to the window sill, the young man slowly leaned forward and rested his forehead against the cold glass of the window to look out onto the street far below. 

He could tell it was going to be a cold, rainy fall day. Gray clouds hung overhead, threatening another rainstorm just like the one that had struck the city two nights ago. The wind whistled sharply against the windowpanes, encouraging the distraught man to turn away from the drafty window and retreat farther into his warm apartment where the TV still hummed the morning news softly in the far corner. 

Pulling his head away from the window, Peter turned to begin his incessant pacing anew. Hanging his head in emotional exhaustion, Peter rubbed his eyes tiredly, trying to remove the fuzziness that clouded the corners of his vision from lack of sleep and stress. Swiping a hand through his unruly brown hair, the boy trudged over to the dark blue, second hand sofa his Aunt May had given him when he had moved out. Falling into the cushions with a heaving sigh, Peter tried to vainly piece together some remnant of his life the way it had been before his world had suddenly crumbled around him in only a manner of days.

Pulling his legs up onto the couch and against his chest, Peter let his head rest on his bent knees. Thinking back to the day before, the young man still felt the same sickening cringe in his stomach and distinct feeling of being a moment away from throwing up that had first struck him when the light of realization had dawned on him. The "imposter" Spiderman didn't only share Peter's powers, but also looked like him. And even though he had looked at the facts from every conceivable angle to debunk his original conclusion, he always came to the same answer. Even accepting this frightening fact, Peter still had to wonder, 'How?'

How could there be another person out there in the world with the same powers as him? How could this malicious man who had killed innocent people in cold blood look exactly like him? This mysterious double had to be a clone. _Had _to be. There was no other explanation. But the Spiderman double had said that he wasn't. And for some reason that sickened Peter's stomach even more, he didn't think the man had been lying…

What did this look alike plan to do with his information if he knew his secret identity? What had he hoped to accomplish by selling Jameson those photos of Spiderman? And what was he still planning? There were too many unanswered questions.

"What do I do?" Peter muttered into the air helplessly, as if seeking answers from some unseen presence above. How much he just wanted to talk to someone right then. It didn't really matter who. But more than anyone, Peter wanted Mary Jane to be there. 

But he couldn't let her know, couldn't let her close to him right then. Things had become suddenly so complicated that Peter dared not let MJ be caught up in the situation. If this double looked like him and knew his secret identity, then MJ was in danger as long as there was this imposter out there. Who knew what he would do to her if she became involved? 

There were several messages from MJ on Peter's answering machine, all of them unanswered. She had called numerous times over the course of the previous day begging Peter to tell her what was wrong and what she could do to help. She had even threatened to come over to his apartment, but after probably the tenth call, she had finally given up and left Peter alone to confront his problems alone until he came to her. 

'She has be upset about me canceling our date then running out on her yesterday,' Peter thought miserably with a twinge of guilt. But he couldn't risk calling her to apologize because he knew she would ask too many questions that he just couldn't answer. He didn't blame her if she was mad at him. He knew he deserved it for how he had left MJ standing alone the previous day staring at his back as he took off in a rush to scour the Bugle building for any sign of the double. And for his desperate attempt, he had found nothing. 

Peter didn't even dare let Spiderman himself look into the situation further. The framed superhero was public enemy number one right now. Every police officer in the whole New York area was out in force looking for the wall crawler and probably wouldn't hesitate to try to take the wall crawler down if they spotted him swinging through the streets. So for now, Peter was lying low, watching the news for any reports of the double. He was going to have to let the imposter Spiderman make the first move. The poor boy had stayed up all night waiting for his double to resurface but the city had remained quiet. And even though Peter was used to long nights, he was exhausted from lack of sleep and emotional stress brought on by the whole situation. 

Turning his attention back to the television he had been watching, Peter let his head drop back onto the back of the couch. His eyes felt heavy with exhaustion, but he knew he couldn't fall asleep. He had to keep watch on the news for any reports of his double, it was all he cold do. Murmurs of the five day forecast hummed from the set as the young man fought against his tired eyelids that were slowly sliding shut. 'Just for a minute,' he finally conceded as his eyes became too heavy to fight, 'I just need to rest my eyes…'

Despite all his good intentions, the young man began to fall into the dark void of unconsciousness. But before Peter lost his battle with exhaustion a sudden explosion sounded from the television, flames licking the one corner of the screen. Startled awake by the loud noise, Peter quickly bolted upright and looked at the screen in a state of momentary confusion, now fully awake. 

Dark smoke clouded the screen as the faint outline of the anchorman wafted in and out of view, the man coughing violently as he shielded his face with his arms from the blast of the explosion. As the smoke cleared slightly, Peter could hear frightened shouts from off camera, all muffled and unintelligible in the chaos. 

Suddenly, from the corner of the screen flashed another wall of crackling, white hot energy that seared the back wall of the news desk to a charred black. The anchorman's frightened voice rang out over the set, _"Oh my god…Not them!"_

More screams of terror rang out from off screen as crashes and loud rumbles of what Peter assumed were impact concussions rocked the camera as though it were filming in an earthquake. 

"Oh my god…" Peter murmured in surprise and shock. Jumping up from the edge of the couch, the boy stood in the middle of his living room looking down at the screen, eye widened in dread. It couldn't be…

As though confirming Peter's sinking suspicion, a blur of red and blue in the shape of a man suddenly jumped onto the counter of the news desk, crouching down on all fours to stare down at the fear paralyzed newscaster. Gracefully, the costumed man that crouched on the news desk shot out a hand to grip the frightened reporters jacket. Without saying a word, the newcomer merely flipped his wrist, sending the anchorman sailing over the counter and crashing somewhere off screen. 

Turning his head towards the camera, the shimmering sliver eyepiece of the man's crimson mask filled the television screen, reflecting the flickering light of flames that burned somewhere off to the web swinger's side. It was Spiderman…

_"Good morning," _chirped the Spiderman mischievously as he went to sit on the very edge of the desk facing the camera, his legs dangling off the side casually, _"I'm sorry to interrupt_ _your regularly scheduled program, but I have an announcement courtesy of the new and improved Sinister Six…"_

"Oh, god, please don't let this be happening…" Peter pleaded, his hands clenched into tight balls at his sides as he stared at the screen, face a blank expression of disbelief. 

_"I'm here to announce that, as of today, I have official joined the Sinister Six. To show the people watching this that I'm not lying, will my associates please step forward…" _

As the Spiderman on screen finished, Peter saw Electro, Venom, the Vulture, Mysterio, and Doctor Octopus came into view as they stepped around from both sides to stand behind the news desk, their muscular bodies blocking the charred backdrop and filling the screen behind Spiderman. Still tinkered on the edge of the desk, his legs crossed at the ankles in casualness, Spiderman continued, _"Besides breaking into this news station to announce my new partnership, we also wanted to warn the people of New York to prepare for what we are dubbing the 'Reign of Terror," the worst assault of evil to ever befall this miserable city…"_

Peter felt his stomach clench in fear as he stared at the television, his double confidently explaining the extent of the Six's plan to attack the city, including massive crime sprees and killings. Breaking out of his thoughts, Peter knew what he had to do. He had to get to that news station to stop the gathered group of some of Spidey's most powerful and dangerous enemies. 

Gripping the bottom of his baggy ESU hooded sweatshirt, the boy hurriedly pulled the piece of clothing up over his head to reveal the top half of his Spiderman costume underneath. Bolting towards the nearby window in a blur of color, Peter stripped the rest of the civilian clothes from over his superhero costume he had been wearing constantly since finding out about his look alike the day before so that he would be prepared for such a moment's notice. 

Shaking his jeans from around his ankle where he then kicked them to the floor uncaringly in his haste, the young man whipped out the red mask that was stashed in the waist band of his costume and pulled it quickly over his head. Swiping his gloves into place on his hands, Spiderman retched open his apartment's window. Cold wind buffeting his chest as he leapt into a crouch on the narrow windowsill.

Behind him, Spiderman heard the trail end of his double's voice drift over to him from the television that still played inside his apartment, _"The Sinister Six are also going to take this time to officially call out the one 'superhero' that may think he can stop us," _the double said, deliberately emphasizing the word with disgust. Staring into the camera he riddled dangerously,_ "He knows who he is…But just so that nobody out there gets any false hopes, I'd like to mention that he has no chance in hell of beating us…" _

"We'll see about that," Spidey snorted defiantly as he kicked off from the window sill and snapped off a web line to snag a nearby parapet across the street. Swinging off into the concrete canyons of the city, the wall crawler made a bee line for the nearby new station situated just ten blocks away from his Manhattan apartment. Burning through his head as Spidey sped away towards the station was the lingering doubt if he could actually take on this newest version of the deadly Sinister Six. 

__

***********

In the near distance, Spidey could make out a char edged, gaping hole in the side of the WPXI news station. The hole stood at least twenty stories off the ground, attesting to the superpowers needed to pull off such an attack on the building without the use of any helicopters or other such flying devices. 

__

Swinging towards the battered building, Spidey could smell the faint stench of burning human flesh wafting on the chilly fall breeze towards him. Gritting his teeth together in rage, the wall crawler had a feeling that there had been at least a few civilian casualties that had been caught up in the initial blast that had carved the massive hole in the side of the news station. 

Closing in on the crippled station, Spiderman allowed the momentum of his swing to shot him in a straight line towards the building as he reached the lowest point of the arch just as he was about to start the ascent towards the apex on the edge of his webbing. Dropping the strand of webbing the web swinger flew through the air like a human projectile missile. Connecting with the brick surface of the building on his feet with the grace of an aerial gymnast, Spiderman gripped hold of the wall with his adhesive fingertips and toes. 

Craning his head up towards the crater that lay several stories above him, the web swinger skittered up the building face like a bug. Quickly covering the distance between him and hole that lead right into the station's newsroom, Spiderman reached the edge of the crater. Pulling himself up into the rubble strewn newsroom, the wall crawler scanned the room in disbelief. 

Laying in neat little packages, numerous bundles of squirming people littered the station floor. __Several twisted bodies dotted the room, blood pooling beneath the motionless forms. Muffled whimpers of fear resonated from behind organic spider web gags as the surviving victims of the attack saw Spiderman stand straight beside the edge of the hole in the outer wall of the station. But nowhere was there any sign of the super villains that Spidey had come to find. 

"Oh no. I'm too late," Spidey cried with regret as he rushed towards the nearest victim that lay in a thick cocoon of webbing. Stooping quickly beside the encased victim, Spidey gripped a handful of webbing between his hands and tore the strands from the person's head, revealing a young woman who Spiderman recognized as the station's weather girl. "Are you OK?" he asked worriedly, pulling more of the steel hard webs from the woman's body to free her. 

"Help! Security! He's back!" the auburn haired woman screamed in terror as the webbing was removed from her eyes and she saw the same mask worn by the man that had attacked the station only minutes earlier, "Please help me! He's going to kill me!" 

"Whoa whoa!" Spidey cried, trying to hush the frightened woman's screams, "I'm not who you think I am. I'm the good guy, really!" But his words fell on deaf ears as the woman struggled to flee even though her legs still remained encased in a layer of webbing. Spiderman could tell by the frightened look in her eyes that nothing he said was going to convince the woman of his good intentions and of his innocence. 

But before Spiderman could say anything, an intense shock vibrated through his brain from the back of his skull. His spider-sense screaming insistently through his brain, the wall crawler indistinctively dove to the side just as a bolt of skin searing electricity licked the patch of floor where he had just been standing. 

"Get away from that woman, you murder!" ordered an angry booming voice as Spidey recovered from his dive and came out of his roll on his shoulder to spring to his feet gracefully a good fifteen feet away from the terrified weather girl. 

Whirling around on the balls of his feet, the startled web swinger beheld a glowing being hovering just on the other side of the gaping hole that had been carved in the far wall of the newsroom. Hot sparks of energy jumped from around the man's outline as his body glowed a lighter shade of blinding white light. Spidey immediately recognized the electrified man's face as being that of Electro, the human powerhouse. 

"So how's my favorite overgrown nightlight doing today?" Spidey asked almost congenially as he back flipped to the other side of the wide newsroom, trying to draw Electro's attention away from the helpless civilians that lay tied in place on the ground all around the wall crawler. He couldn't let any more people get hurt by that maniac. 

"Can it, bug!" Electro shouted with a scowl, his face almost demonic as tiny lightening bolts sizzled the chilly air around him, "You're going to be chocking on those stupid wisecracks of yours in a minute. I've had enough of your big mouth!"

"Ouch… Harsh words! Looks like someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning," Spidey remarked, bobbing his head warily from side to side as he watched Electro for any sudden attacks the human lightening rod might decide to throw at him. 

"I am going to _so _enjoy turning you into a statue of burnt charcoal," the villain snarled, the glowing aura of energy around him flaring with new intensity, "You've gone too far today. I'm going to make sure that you don't hurt any more innocent people."

Spiderman's eyebrow screwed up in the form of a question mark on his forehead at Electro's words. What was this guy talking about? Since when did Electro care about innocent people? Usually he only considered them moving target for shooting practice. 

"I can say the same about you, hothead. I'm making it my personal mission that I see you and the rest of your buddies rotting behind bars by the end of the day. Now where are they? I know you're not that stupid to try to attack me all by your little itty bitty lonesome," Spiderman said. 

Electro's flickering face twisted into an expression of unbridled rage at Spiderman's words. Spidey was sure the human powerhouse was going to launch a barrage of energy blasts at him for his taunts. But before he could get any reaction from Electro, another jolt of his spider-sense gave him just enough time to cringe back as the remains of the already gutted wall blasted inward towards him. Beneath his booted feet, Spidey could feel the whole building shake from the blast. Shielding his hooded face from the debris that showered him from the sudden collapse of the wall, Spiderman felt the chilly fall air from outside whistle around his body. 

"Be careful what you wish for, insect," came a familiar voice as Spidey squinted to make out the dark features of a group of men silhouetted by the gray sky on the other side of the demolished newsroom from outside. "You've spun your own noose and we're taking you back with us, dead or alive." Spidey recognized the voice as being that of Mysterio, the master of illusion's voice slightly distorted from behind his fish bowl shaped helmet. 

Frowning under his dust covered mask, Spiderman felt his skin crawl as the outlines of some very familiar forms came into focus. Electro still hovered in the air where he had been before but he had now been joined by his four notorious accomplices. Standing before the outnumbered wall crawler stood the melodramatic Mysterio, Dr. Octopus' adamantium tentacle framed body, Venom's drool dripping mouth of needles, and the Vulture's bald head gleaming in the light cast by Electro's flickering form who he hovered beside.

"Give up now, wall crawler," insisted the Vulture with a snaggle toothed snarl at the masked man. 

Giving a demonic toothy grin, Venom added in his synthesized voice, "But if you absolutely feel the need to try to get past us, we'll be more then happy to beat you to within an inch of your life so you won't give us any problems on the way back. But don't think for a second that I plan on giving you over to the authorities in one piece…"

"Hmm… I didn't know we were going anywhere," Spidey remarked with a cock of his head to the side. 

"Don't play games with us," warned Dr. Octopus grimly, his tentacles dancing behind him like a batch of cobras ready to strike, "You're not getting away with what you did here today. You're going to finally pay for your crimes." 

"What are you talking about?!," the wall crawler cried in confusion, "I'm the one that saw you lunatics breaking into this TV station! I have no idea what you guys are talking about. Somebody must have put something in the morning pot of coffee! And I want to know where that imposter is! I have a score to settle with him."

"Enough with this foolishness!" Octavius finally shouted in frustration, the claws at the ends of his tentacles snapping in agitation, "Just get him!"

At the not so good doctor's words, the group of villains made a collective lunge at Spiderman, trying to overtake him by sheer force. Seeing them coming at him with the grace of a high school football team, Spidey didn't even need his spider-sense to know that he had to move if he didn't want to be on the bottom of a massive pile up. 

Ducking under the Vulture's razor sharp wing that whistled over his head by the berth of only an inch, Spiderman made a desperate lunge for the massive expanse of dark storm clouded skyline where the side of the building had once stood. There was no way he was going to be able to fight all five of his worst enemies in that compact newsroom filled with innocent people. He needed to get outside where he could maneuver. 

Hopping over the rubble of the demolished wall, Spidey was almost at the lip of the crater when his spider-sense suddenly screamed out. Unable to react quick enough, the web swinger felt a smooth metallic object wrap around his ankle. Glancing over his shoulder, Spidey caught a smug look of satisfaction spread across Dr. Octopus's face. 

"Oh, sh-" But before could Spidey could finish his curse, he was violently retched off the ground by his ensnared foot and dangled upside down several feet above the floor in front of the doctor. Grimacing under his mask from the stinging pain of the metal tentacle boring into his skin as gravity pulled him downward, Spiderman gritted his teeth together as he looked into the deranged scientist's face. 

"We're ending this right here and now," Octavius snarled into Spidey's face, the bright artificial light of the newsroom glinting off the corners of his dark sunglasses. Gathering around the doctor, the other super villains looked at Spiderman with clear scowls of distain, circling their prey in victory. 

"Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you boys, but I have dinner plans that I just can't cancel. Call my secretary and I'm sure she can put you somewhere in my schedule," the dangling superhero quipped as he whipped his hand up and snapped a thick wad of webbing into the scientist's face. Caught off guard by this surprise attack, the doctor cried out loudly as he clawed at the webbing that wrapped half way around his face, blinding him. Momentarily losing his mental control over his slithering tentacles, Spiderman's attack allowed the wall crawler the few milliseconds he needed to shimmy out of Octavius' grasp. 

Dropping to the floor, the masked man landed on his back with a loud 'whooof' of air being knocked out of his lungs by the impact. Springing quickly back onto his feet agilely, Spiderman beat a hasty retreat once again towards the massive hole in the side of the news station. Cries of rage sounded from behind him as Spidey swiveled in mid air at the edge of the crumbling remains of the building and jumped to grip the outer wall of the structure. Pulling himself far enough up on the outer brick wall with his upper body strength until he could get his feet up onto the side of the building, Spiderman then took off up the wall skittering across the face of the structure like a bug. 

Only several feet above the demolished newsroom, Spidey felt a searing heat billow up to buffet his back from a blast of blistering electricity that shot out from the inside of the building like a cannon. It seemed that Electro was very trigger happy that day. 

'Here comes the cavalry…' the young superhero thought as he picked up the pace and hustled his butt faster up the side of the building, 'Have to get to the roof…' 

"Come back a play with us!" Spidey heard from behind him. Stealing a glance behind him, the retreating man saw Venom's slobbering tongue lash the air as the symbiote clad Eddie Brock took chase after Spiderman up the building's face. Gaining ground swiftly on his prey, several slithering black psudopods snaked from off Venom's body, the tentacle's reaching out towards Spiderman hungrily. 

"Sorry, smiles. But I'm a board game type of guy," Spidey shouted back over his shoulder as the decretive edging of the roof came into his line of sight. Pushing more effort into his legs, the wall crawler quickly covered the distance that lay between him and horizontal ground above. Crawling over the edge onto the roof, Spiderman's sixth sense gave a warning buzz just as he felt a rush of air hit his back and saw a green blur zoom upward past him from out of the corner of his eye. 

"Give up!" screamed Adrian Toomes angrily as he made a wild dive towards the masked man, his winged arm outstretched in a clothes hanger to catch Spidey in the throat. Fortunately for the wall crawler, his spider-sense alerted him to the danger well in advance giving him time to safely dive off to the side. 

Springing up onto the metal casing of a nearby rooftop stairwell, Spidey crouched down to prepare for another attack. As he wheeled around to the east side of the building which he had just scaled, Spiderman caught the first glimpses of Dr. Octopus's head emerging over the edge of the rooftop. Using his four metal legs to grip and propel himself up the outer wall of the building, the deranged scientist merely stepped down effortlessly as his tentacles easily hoisted his chubby body up onto the roof. 

Following close behind, Electro shot up into the air like a shooting star to then hover like a small sun overhead of the assembling group. Glaring daggers at the crouching arachnid, Electro's eyes flared bolts of electricity in rage. Joining his companion above, the Vulture swooped around in a wide circle to then hover beside the human lightening rod. 

Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Spiderman saw a giant plume of purplish smoke billow up from the side of the rooftop. Stepping out of the swirling mass of mist, Mysterio swept his flowing cape from in front of him dramatically with a flick of his wrist. 

"Always have to be the one to make a dramatic entrance, don't ya?" Spidey quipped as the purplish mist faded away into nothing behind the illusionist. 

"This is the end of the line," Dr. Octopus remarked as he and the other villains stared back at the cornered web swinger who crouched low on the nearby boxy stairwell casing, "You may have thought you could escape from us into this world, but we don't intend to let you corrupt this place like you did ours. We refuse to let your evil reek havoc in this world." 

"You're not going to ruin any more lives, bug," Venom hissed from behind his rolling red tongue, the symbiote's psudopods whipping the air around him in clear agitation. 

"What are you weirdoes talking about?!" Spidey cried out loudly in bewilderment, extremely caught off guard by these mysterious riddles. 

"We're talking about how you killed innocent people the day before yesterday," answered the Vulture with a scowl spread across his wrinkled head, "And now this. You deserve to rot away in the deepest darkest jail cell they can find to throw you in."

"I can say the same about you Toomes," Spidey pointed out defiantly, "I don't know where you get off blaming me for this mess when I saw _you _breaking into that station! And I want to know where that other guy is! Is this one of his sick and twisted ideas to blame me for something else that I would never, never do!? Is it?!" Anger tainted his voice as he looked back at the group of convicted murders that dared say he was responsible for the deaths of innocent people. 

"Do _not _try to fool us, bug," Electro growled dangerously from above, spontaneous sparks of pure electricity jumping off his body, "We caught you red-handed at the scene of the crime. You're going to pay for your crimes one way or the other. You're out numbered. Give up!"

"No! I will never let you murders get away with this!" 

"Then you've just forfeited your live…" Quentin Beck whispered with violence in his tone, "We'll take you back dead if we really must. It makes no difference to me. I think a death at our hands would be more appropriate for a murderous scum like you then actually letting you live to spend the rest of your days living off the people of this country like a parasite in some maximum security prison anyway…assuming the judge didn't give you the death sentence, of course."

Taking this as their cue to attack, the men lunged at Spiderman all at once, fanning out to surround him. Corkscrewing off the stair shed, Spiderman leapt up just as blast of electricity scorched the place where he had been standing. Tingling at the base of his skull, the web swinger's spider-sense screamed to him as danger overtook him from all sides. 

Dodging a punch here and a kick there, Spiderman felt himself quickly becoming overwhelmed by the group of super powered men as he was slowly driven towards the edge of the rooftop. Several blows battered the wall crawler's body mercilessly as he struggled to block and exchange attacks with his relentless protagonists. 

But as he fought valiantly for his life, the web swinger noticed that Dr. Octopus had not taken part in the frontal assault. The pudgy scientist merely stood off to the side, his forehead wrinkled up in grim contemplation. Even from across the wide TV station rooftop littered with radio antennas and satellite dishes, Spiderman could feel Octavius' shaded eyes boring into him, silently sizing him up. But the masked superhero could not take the time to question the eight legged spectator. Four other super powered men were still out for his blood.

'Can't keep this up,' Spidey's thoughts screamed in distress as one of Venom's fists connected with his jaw, sending him flying backwards to crash violently against a nearby air conditioning unit. Quickly struggling to his shaky feet, the masked man felt his spider-sense cry out again as one of the Vulture's razor edged wings zoomed towards his head like a guillotine ready to lop off his head. 

Flipping a thick strand of webbing to snare the tip of Toomes' wing, Spiderman pulled down hard on the line sending the bird like villain crashing to the ground several feet in front of him. Before the wall crawler could take a second to savor his small victory, another buzz rang through his brain. 

Heat enveloped around the unnumbered man as he screamed out in pain. Smashing into his back, one of Electro's energy blasts turned the back of the young superhero's red and blue costume to a blackened crisp. Recovering himself before falling to the ground, Spidey snapped off a strand of webbing to snag the tip of one of the numerous radio antennas that sprouted up from the news station's rooftop. 

Pulling the strand taunt, Spiderman used the flexible webbing to bungee him skyward up to the top of the station's main radio tower. Landing on one of the upper horizontal beams of the tower, Spiderman gasped for breath as he waited for the immediate sting of Electro's surprise attack to dull away in the chilly fall air that whistled around him. 

But before the web swinger could form a plan to somehow make it out of his deadly situation alive, he felt the twenty foot metal structure he stood on suddenly shake violently beneath him. Swiveling himself out from his perch to sight down the radio tower, Spidey's stomach dropped as he saw Venom hugging the base of the steel structure, his tooth grin pulled back in a mischievous grin. 

"Uh oh…" Spidey muttered with dread. 

"Now now now…." Eddie Brock sang to the stranded wall crawler, "It's not nice to run out on people like that! We think you need a time out!" 

Gripping the bottom beam of the radio tower, Venom retched back hard, pulling the support rivets of the structure to pop out of the rooftop in plinging waves. The whole structure groaned loudly as it began to slowly topple to the side like a giant domino. 

Hugging the nearest beam he could grab, Spiderman gasped as the entire radio antenna began to tip to the side, falling towards the roof. Whipping his head around, Spidey looked around hurriedly for anything else he could jump to. Seeing a large satellite dish off to his side, he made a wild leap as the radio tower fell to the rooftop below him with a booming crash. 

As the wall crawler flew through the air, intent on reaching the satellite dish, a sudden mass slammed into him with a bone crushing jar, sending him into a spiraling nosedive. Crying out in surprise, Spidey heard a cackling laugh from above him just before he crashed onto solid concrete. Landing ungracefully in a massive heap of twisted limbs, Spiderman groaned in pain as the world spun around him. 

"How did you like that? Not so tough now since your dealing with others in your own league instead of beating up on helpless people," he heard the Vulture taunt from somewhere high above. 

'Great…I probably have a concussion now and I still have five super powered guys hell bent on killing me to deal with,' he thought as he heaved his battered body up. Ignoring the black fuzz that was beginning to tunnel around his vision, Spiderman pulled himself up onto shaky feet to face the super villains that had once again managed to surround him where he had been batted down by Toomes. 

"Whoever said you were in the same league as me?" Spidey shot back despite his weakened state, "You guys don't even qualify for the pee wees…" He could only imagine the enraged look that was etched on the old man's face now. He was too battered to lift his head upward to see. Dark patched spotted his eyes as his body sagged visibly with exhaustion. 

"Indignant to the very end, I see," Mysterio commented from off to Spidey's side, his purple cape fluttering behind him in the chilly fall breeze that swept across the rooftop, "I must give you credit for lasting this long against all of us, but your luck's just run out, wall crawler." 

Reaching into the folds of his cape, the illusionist's gloved hand returned with a small, boxy object gripped between his fingertips. Squeezing the matchbox sized cube, Mysterio then hurled the thing to land several paces in front of the battered superhero. Landing with a soft 'plink,' the cube sat there for a moment, nothing happening. Spidey was about to make a snide comment about Mysterio's shoty handiwork when the cube suddenly exploded in a giant cloud of thick pinkish smoke. 

Startled by this attack, Spiderman unconsciously gasped in surprise, unwittingly sucking a lungful of the swirling pink mist into his mouth. His spider-sense screamed through his skull as he felt the smoke enter his lungs. Coughing violently, Spiderman quickly covered his face with his arms to shield his nose and mouth before anymore of the smoke could enter his respiratory track. But the damage had already been done. 

The pink smoke continued to swirl all around him as Spidey quickly felt his head going fuzzy and heavy. The back of his throat stung with the bitter aftertaste of Mysterio's strange mist, his arms and legs suddenly feeling weak and clumsy. Trying desperately to command his legs to move to escape from out of the billowing pink cloud, Spiderman felt his muscles suddenly seize up in paralysis. Crashing to his side on the tarred rooftop, the wall crawler's body lay rigid and helpless. 

'No…Not like this…I can't let them win.' 

Spiderman struggled to move, struggled to escape from certain capture. But his body wouldn't respond. His vision was becoming blurry and fuzzy, the shapes he saw warping and spinning in vibrant colors that were not true to reality. Slowly his eyelids became too heavy to fight anymore as his vision fell away into scary, swirling images only seen in the darkest of nightmares. Succumbing to Mysterio's mist, Spidey's eyes finally slid shut. 

Mysterio's smoke began to dissipate as a chilly gut of wind blew across the high rooftop of the news station, whipping around the amassed men that stood at a distance from the fallen superhero's body. The dark storm clouds on the horizon were beginning to sweep in overhead, threatening a tempest.

"What was that!?" the Vulture demanded as he alighted from the air to stand beside Mysterio who stood proudly watching as his pink mist finally wafted away to nothing in the breeze, "You took him down in less then a minute!" 

"It's a special hallucinogenic gas that I have developed," the master of illusion replied as he walked slowly over to stand over the still form laying motionless several paces away, "I made it specifically to take down this monster, but before I could use it, Spiderman escaped into this dimension." 

"Did you kill him?" Electro questioned as he dropped the flickering aura of energy from around his body. Dropping down to the rooftop, the human powerhouse stared down at Spiderman as the others also circled around the unconscious web swinger. 

"No. It only knocks the person out for several hours, but while they're out they experience some of the most vivid and realistic hallucinations imaginable," Beck replied emotionlessly, his cape snapping in the wind. Silence hung over the five men as they towered over the helpless body at their feet. 

"Looks like the itsy bitsy spider didn't get back up the water spout after all…" Venom hissed with a toothy grin as he stooped beside the still body at his feet, "It's a shame though…We wanted to have a little more fun with him. Spiderman deserves to suffer for what he's done here."

"Well, this went a little easier then I expected, but we got what we came for…" Electro said confidently, looking around at the other men for confirmation. 

"I'm not so sure…" cut in a raspy voice before anyone else could answer. Turning to face the speaker, the super powered men saw Dr. Otto Octavius finally moving from the spot he had stood while they had fought Spiderman in their relatively short but violent battle on the news station rooftop. 

"What are you talking about, Octavius?" Mysterio inquired coldly.

"I mean, I am not as certain as you men are that this is really the Spiderman we came here to retrieve," the doctor replied with a frown, his sunglass hidden eyes riveted skeptically on the unconscious superhero. 

"How do you know?" demanded Toomes, "We all heard on the police dispatch that Spiderman was seen breaking into this station. And we all saw him down there attacking that woman. How can you not believe this is that murderer?" 

"Weren't you listening to him before?" Octavius shot back angrily, "This Spiderman said he saw us on the television along with 'another guy' Are you not the least bit curious if this other person could really be the Spiderman we're looking for? Do not forget there are two different Spidermen in this dimension now. And then there are our own alternate selves to deal with. It's all together possible that the Spiderman of our dimension has teamed up with the alternate versions of ourselves…"

"That's impossible!" Venom snarled, "Why would our other selves team up with this murderer?!"

"I don't know, but it is something we must look into before jumping to conclusions," Dr. Octopus answered grimly, "Whatever the case, I believe the answers we seek lie with the Spiderman currently in our control."

"What do we do?" the Vulture questioned as he shot a skeptical frown down to the drugged Spiderman who lay motionless within the circle of men. In the distance, the group of super powered men could hear the first faint wails of police sirens converging on their position from below on street level. 

"Whatever we decide to do, we must do it fast," Mysterio interjected hurriedly, "The police are coming. We cannot be found here. It would rise too many questions by the authorities." 

"We must move to a more secure location before anything," Octavius quickly replied in an authoritive tone as he snaked two of his metal tentacles down to pick up Spiderman's limp body off the rooftop. Cradling the drugged superhero with one of his extra metallic appendages, Dr. Octopus moved towards the edge of the roof, two of his tentacles carrying him across the expanse like a pair of stilts. Held aloft by the doctor's metal arm that wrapped itself tightly around his waist, Spiderman moaned a barely audible whimper of pain as he was carted behind Octavius. 

"I think I know a place we can go," Mysterio offered as he and the others quickly rushed after the retreating doctor. Not acknowledging the illusionist, Dr. Octopus disappeared over the building's edge, his tentacles gripping the stone face of the structure as they carried him and his cargo down. 

Close behind the doctor, the Vulture and Electro took to the air in pursuit as Venom shot off a line of symbiote produced webbing similar to that of Spiderman's and shot out into the city. Mysterio followed by disappearing in a thick plume of smoke, leaving the station rooftop empty as though they had never been there, except for the toppled radio tower that lay twisted in a heap off on the far side. 

Far below, the police sirens screamed up through the concrete canyons of the city as the squad cars screeched to an abrupt halt before the news station. Low thunder rumbled overhead as the six figures disappeared into the growing darkness of the coming storm. Before the first few drops of rain even hit the ground, the super powered men had vanished from sight, taking with them their unconscious prisoner and leaving the police to swarm the news station where the victims of the Sinister Six's attack still lay ensnared in thick bundles of Spiderman's webbing… 

Like I said up top, I hope to get another chapter up soon. But don't forget I thrive on critics and reviews of my work. I read any constructive criticism even-mindedly and to try to work off them to improve the story. Got any suggestions, comments, or concerns? Drop a review and voice them. So until next time, I'm signing out

-LAXgirl


	5. What Lies Behind the Red Mask

Wow. Sorry about that long hiatus. Between vacations, term papers, work, and every other little annoying side track that seems to keep popping up along the way, I've been a little bit busy needless to say! Florida was great. Got a bit of a tan and I managed to sucker the parental units into taking me to Universal Studios…To anyone who hadn't been there, the Spider-man ride kicks major booty! Went on it three times and still couldn't get enough! Seriously best ride in the whole park!

Anyway, my writing's been slacking because of my latest project. For all those who liked "Down Came the Rain," hold onto your seats! A homemade, comic book version of the story is on the way! I don't like to brag, but I think you'll be pleasantly pleased with it. Preliminary sketches of the first chapter are halfway done and I can't wait to add color! Hehehehe I'm was _so _excited about it, I just had to let the cat out of the bag! So bare with me for a little while longer with my slow writing. I plan on working on it a lot over Christmas break and getting a website up just for it! 

So enjoy what I wrote while I was sunning myself on a sandy beach down South several weeks ago as Spidey finds himself caught in a nightmarish hell and discovers his captors have found out something a little too personal about him for his liking…. 

Disclaimer: Usual stuff. Nothing new. Spidey's and all other characters still aren't mine. 

*****************

"Hello? Anybody there? Where am I?" Spiderman cried out into the black abyss of empty space that surrounded him. His words echoed in the distance then faded away into nothing. There came no answer as silence stung his ears in his call's wake.

Looking around, Spiderman saw nothing, only walls of pitch black nothingness. For a moment, he thought he might have been in some king of windowless room, but shifting his weight between his feet nervously, the wall crawler heard the faint grainy scuffle of sand underfoot. Through his mask, he could feel a warm, gentle breeze caress his face and whistle around his hooded head as though he were outside. 

But if he was outside, why wasn't there any light? And why was it so eerily quiet? And how did he get wherever he was? 

Was this some kind of trick orchestrated by the group of super powered psychopaths that he had just been fighting? The last thing he remembered was fighting them on the rooftop of the news station. The last few memories of his fight were fuzzy, fleeting images before they finally blurred away into obscurity. 

Determined to figure out where he was, Spiderman shouted loudly into the lightless void of silence that had swallowed him. "Helloooooo! Is there anyone there?" he shouted again, becoming more nervous as his voice slowly died away in the distance. 

Stillness hung heavily in the air as Spiderman waited breathlessly for a reply. After a moment of tense waiting, the masked superhero snorted in dismay. It looked like he was alone in that inky darkness. 

'Now what do I do?' he wondered helplessly, straining his eyes to see anything through the darkness, 'I have to get back and stop the Sinister Six…err five, I guess…Who knows what they're up to right now…" 

Turning to his right, the masked man shuffled several paces ahead, his one arm held out straight out in front of him like a shield to prevent himself from walking into anything blindly. It wasn't that he didn't really trust his spider-sense, but at that given moment, the young crime fighter didn't feel completely safe in that eerie black void of silence. 

But before Spidey could get very far, a low masculine whisper suddenly hissed in his ear through the darkness, as though he was right beside the web swinger, "Where do you think you're going?" 

Startled, Spiderman whipped around to face the mysterious presence, but he was met with only more inky gloom. His stomach knotted in dread as he realized his spider-sense hadn't alerted him to anyone hiding in the darkness. "Who's there?" Spidey squeaked out, his heart thundering in his chest with fear, "Where am I?"

"Poor little spider…" simpered the voice mockingly, "So far away from home, yet so close…"

"What do you mean?" Spiderman shouted into the endless track of twilight warily, "Who are you?" 

"It isn't important who I am. What's important is who you are…" remarked the voice enigmatically. The voice sounded all around the blind wall crawler, like the speaker was everywhere but nowhere all at once. 

"I know who I am," Spidey retorted tightly, becoming edgy by his mysterious host's line of riddles. 

"No. You don't," insisted the faceless presence dangerously, cold malice tainting his voice, "And it's because of that, everyone and everything that's ever meant anything to you is now gone…"

"What are you talking about?" the young superhero demanded angrily, swinging his head from side to side in sweeping arches trying to pin point the mysterious man in the darkness. 

"I'll show you,…hero" the voice snarled as the thick darkness slowly snaked away in oily wisps until they finally faded into nothingness to reveal a reddened sky overhead. Spiderman quickly realized he stood in the center of a wide city street, tall buildings lining the street on either side of him. But what he saw around him made his beating heart skip a beat. 

The glow of raging fires flickered off the sides of the half demolished buildings that stood like gutted skeletons all around him. Almost all of the windows of the crumbling structures lay in broken shards at the bases like a carpet of glass. Huge chunks of concrete were missing from the buildings as though a devastating war had taken place there.

Overturned cars lay piled high like discarded children's toys in the street. Rubble and twisted metal littered the cracked and battle scarred sidewalks. Off on the jagged horizon of the city skyline that burned brightly with unchecked fires, the speechless crime fighter saw pillars of thick black smoke billowing up towards the crimson sky. 

Faint screams of terror of unseen people drifted on the smoky air, a mixture of sorrowful wails and baneful sobs that intensified the horrific scene of the massive holocaust that surrounded Spiderman. What had once been a city was now the smoldering aftermath of Armageddon. 

Gasping a whistling breath of air into his lungs between clenched teeth, Spiderman whipped his head about in a state of shock, utterly appalled by the devastation around him. He stood in Manhattan, in a section of the city he was well acquainted with, but could barely recognize now. How long had he been out? He couldn't have been that long. How could Dr. Octopus, Venom, Electro, Mysterio, the Vulture, and his evil double have caused so much devastation in such a short amount of time? 

"What happened here? Who did this?" the masked man sputtered in rage by the massive destruction, pivoting on his heels to encompass the full scope of the area. 

All of a sudden, an evil laugh rang out; first starting in a low chuckle then raising in pitch until it began to drown out Spiderman's own thoughts. A cold shiver ran down the wall crawler's spine to the small of his back as the laughter was carried on the smoky wind that whistled through the devastated city streets. 

"Who's there?" the young man screamed out over the insane laughter of sadistic mirth. The deep chuckles of evil glee faded away as the mischievous jokester chuckled from somewhere above, "I am." 

Pin pointing the voice, Spidey's head snapped in the direction it had come. Behind the wall crawler to his right, one of the tall building that had once towered upwards to reach the sky lay snapped in half, its top ten stories snapped from the base several levels up from the ground floor. The crumbling remains of the top several stories hung downwards into the middle of the street, blocking anything from passing in that direction. 

There, tinkering on all fours on the edge of the fallen section that angled downwards, Spiderman saw the outline of a brightly garbed man, the edges of his red and blue clothes glowing in the golden light cast by the raging fired that blazed nearby. 

The twin tear drop shaped eyepieces of the man's crimson mask glimmered like two demonic eyes. It was Spidey's double, his identical twin.

"You!?" Spidey sputtered in shock. 

"Do you like how I redid the place?" the double asked with a puff of pride down to the wall crawler, "I think it's a big improvement. I think may have to look into that "Trading Spaces" show." 

The young superhero stood stunned, anger boiling in his chest as he again looked around at the war zone that had once been a city block. "How could you do something like this?" Spidey growled between gritted teeth up towards the figure perched on the collapsed building. 

"Very easily. I hardly even broke a sweat," Spiderman replied nonchalantly as he stood straight and hopped down from the broken remains of the fallen architectural giant. Landing atop one of the few cars left in the street below that had not been toppled onto its side, Spiderman caught himself gracefully on the charred car roof. His thrown weight managed to shake loose a small shower of already shattered glass from the twisted remains of the windshield frame. 

Settling back on his heels to crouch eyelevel with Spidey who stood a good fifteen feet away across the street, the double gave another evil chuckle with a cock of his head to the side. 

Regaining his composure, Spidey called over jovially, "I saw your little television debut earlier today and wanted to know if I could get your autograph. I think it may be worth something soon, seeing as how I'm going to haul your little spandex hieni all the way to the state penitentiary. I'm sure with you new celebrity status, they'll find you a nice cell with a view." His skin crawled as he looked at his evil twin and continued, "So where're your buddies? I don't want Doc Ock and the rest of those circus rejects to let you take all the credit." 

"You don't have to worry about them," Spiderman answered, "You're going to have you hands full with just me." 

"We'll see about that, Sunshine," Spidey retorted, crouching down to spring up onto one of the huge chinks of concrete that had been violently separated by its original building and now lay half embedded in the cracked sidewalk. The crime fight was now on the same side of the street as his mirror image. 

"Come and get me then, hero," he said cockily, snorting his pet name for the wall crawler tauntingly.

Springing from his spot on the concrete boulder, Spiderman flew through the air, his fist pulled back in a punch in an attack meant for his evil double. But before he got anywhere close enough to deal a blow to the other Spiderman, the web swinger suddenly froze in midair, his body hovering several feet above the ground as though held aloft by some unseen power. Struggling to move, Spidey tried to kick and flail his legs and arms wildly to move, but his efforts proved fruitless. His muscles were locked, his body paralyzed. 

"What did you do?" Spidey cried in alarm as his body floated motionless above the city street. 

Hopping down from the top of the car, Spiderman strided over to the helpless crime fighter arrogantly, his shoulders set back so that his muscular chest puffed out intimidatingly. 

"I can do anything here, little spider," Spiderman smirked in amusement at the sight of Spidey's body that hung in the air like some kind of balloon, "You're nothing but an amusing toy to me right now. Once I get tired of you, I'll get rid of you just like all my other play things."

"I won't let you get away with what you've done," the ensnarled superhero growled. 

Peeling a handful of red spandex from off Spidey's chest above him, Spiderman pulled the web swinger's masked face down within an inch of his own and whispered in a low voice, "I already have…" Releasing his hold, Spidey bobbed back up to his original position where he levitated high above the ground, as though swimming free style. 

"Do you want me to tell you why pretending to be something you're not is dangerous?" Spiderman asked as the burning city around them slowly faded away like smoke to be replaced by the endless black void from before. 

"It's pointless to try and be a hero because you always end up failing in the end," the masked criminal said, his body still visible to Spidey in the darkness, clear as day, as though he was merely standing in front of a black backdrop. 

Slowly circling the suspended man's body like a predator ready to deliver the final death blow, Spiderman continued, "You can never save everyone. It's beyond your control to even try. So why waste your time? It's so much easier to give into your primal desires and just take what you want. It's the only way to survive in this world. It's like what Darwin said, only the strong survive. I know deep down, you know I'm right. I asked you before if you knew who you were, and I'll tell you who you are. Deep down, under all those shallow layers of honor and responsibility that you hide behind, you're no better then me. You're just like me. I'm you and you're me. We're just two sides of the same coin."

"You're wrong!" the levitating crime fighter shouted, shaking his head fiercely from side to side in negation, "I'm nothing like you. I'm not a cold blooded killer who enjoys in death and destruction." He again struggled to escape from the power that held him effortlessly in the air. 

"Poor little fool," Spiderman sighed, shaking his head sadly, "You're fighting your true self. You say you're not a killer, but what about Norman Osborn?" Spidey froze instantly at he mention of the name of the man he had once saw as a father figure. "Don't you remember the satisfaction that ran through your blood as he died right before your eyes, knowing that you were the one who had the power? You felt powerful, didn't you? And you liked it…"

"No! I hated myself for what happened. Mr. Osborn died, but it wasn't my fault. I tried to save him," Spiderman cried, remembering the horrible night he had defeated the Green Goblin. 

"Is that how you try to rationalize what happened?" Spiderman asked in a cold whisper, "You're just fighting your true self- your darker self. Osborn's death was all your fault and your loved it. You could feel yourself screaming for more blood but you denied yourself anymore of those dark pleasures.:

"That's because I'm not a killer!" Spiderman shouted, angry tears now stinging the corners of his eyes. 

"Yes you are," whispered the double, coming to stand in front of the hovering body, "And I'll help you remember who you really are…"

Taking several steps backwards, Spiderman stood at a distance looking at the suspended superhero, silently eyeing him through the silver bug like eyepieces of his mask as a smoky figure began to materialize into the form of a young woman with flaming red hair. Solidifying, Spidey recognized the apparition as Mary Jane Watson. 

"MJ!" Spidey shouted to her as he strained his muscles desperately to move, "Get out of here! That's not me! Hurry! Run!" But his urgent pleas seemed to fall on deaf ears as the red head stared ahead as if in a trance, her green eyes a dim shadow of the characteristic soul piercing intensity. 

"Now come over here and remember who you really are," ordered the masked killer as Spidey suddenly dropped from out of the air to crash to the ground below in a jumbled heap of limbs, "Stop denying who you really are…"

Slowly, the wall crawler pulled himself to his knees, then stood. Looking at his split image, Spidey felt his legs begin to move and cover the distance between himself and the other two. 

'What's going on?' his thoughts thundered in his head, 'I can't stop! I can't control my body! It's like someone's controlling me!' Panic seized his heart as he came to stop in front of the entranced young woman he loved. 

"Give into your darker self," whispered Spiderman in the controlled web swinger's ear as Spidey stared into Mary Jane's emerald eyes, "Just let go of all your pathetic morals and heroics. This is who you really are…"

'No,' the helpless superhero struggled to cry out loud as both hands slowly reached up from his sides to reach out for MJ's slender neck. 'No! I won't do this! I can't! I'm not like this! I'm not a killer! I'm not like him! Stop! Please stop!" he wanted to scream at the top of his lungs to stop as he felt his fingers graze MJ's neck.

But his gloved hands did not heed his pleas and slowly wrapped around the young woman's throat. As his grip unwillingly tightened on her neck, Mary Jane's eyes suddenly sprang to life as though she had just been startled out of a daydream. In the shimmering green pools of liquid, Spiderman saw the look that screamed out to him silently, 'Why are you doing this? What did I do? 

Looking into her terrified eyes, Spiderman's soul screamed for him to stop, to release his death grip on the chocking young woman. He could feel her desperate gasps of air fluttering under his grip. He could see MJ's cheeks and lips beginning to blue. But no matter how hard he commanded his body to stop, his grip only clamped down harder. 

"Pe..ter…" MJ sobbed softly between gasping chocks, staring up into his eyes. Her fingernails dug into his hands as she struggled to pry his powerful hands from her throat. Spiderman watched helplessly as MJ's eyes slowly fluttered shut, her body sagging in hands towards the floor. Before she succumbed to death, shining in her eyes was the silent accusation of murder and betrayal. 

As Spiderman looked down in horror, he could finally feel control returning to his body. Tears streamed down his cheeks under his mask as he immediately released Mary Jane, letting her lifeless body tumbled into a heap at his feet. 

"MJ!" he screamed, collapsing to his knees beside her limp body. Cradling the still warm body against his chest and rocking her body gently as though in comfort, he pleaded in tear chocked sobs, "MJ! No. MJ, come back please. I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Please come back!" But he saw no sign of life anywhere in the beautiful girl. Overcome with grief and inconsolable remorse, Spiderman clutched Mary Jane's body tightly to him, his pitiful cries muffled as he wailed helplessly into her waves of copper hair. 

"How pitiful…" remarked an icy voice behind the distraught web swinger, "After all that, you still won't accept the truth." Wheeling around, Spiderman saw his double standing nearby where he had stood watching the drama silently with perverse enjoyment. 

"How could you!" Spiderman screamed between heaving sobs, still clutching MJ's limp body in his arms, "I loved her! How could you make me kill her?!" 

"I didn't make you do anything," Spiderman said calmly, "This was all you. This is your true self. Stop fighting and become what you are."

"Shut up! Shut up, right now!" the grieving man screamed, "I'll make you pay for what you've done! You've gone too far!" Gently setting the dead girl's body on the ground beside him, Spiderman stood shakingly, his tear reddened eyes locked onto the murderous double. 

For the first time in his life, Spiderman wanted to kill someone. He had never believed in killing for any reason, especially for revenge. But his outlook on things had changed in the matter of seconds. Now all he wanted was to strangle the life out of the other Spiderman just like he had made him strangle his one true love. 

Leaping at the other man viciously, Spidey hammered the man's masked face with both fists as hard as he could, his rage directed into every blow. He could feel the anger and grief building inside him with each punch to Spiderman's hooded head. Giving no resistance to Spidey's brutal attack, the double seemed to hardly feel anything as he stood motionless like a statue. Whispering between each bone crushing blow to his face and body, he said, "See…This is who you really are…You're no different from me…We're the same…Do you feel the bloodlust rising in you?...The uncontrolled desire to kill?" 

"Shut up!" the grief stricken man wailed as he relinquished his useless attack and stumbled backwards from his double. Falling to the ground, the wall crawler clawed at the sides of his head as though trying to rid the sound of Spiderman's voice from his ears, "I'm not like you! I'm not a killer! It's not true!" 

"It is true. You saw for yourself how much you wanted to kill me just now. It won't be much longer before you accept the truth…" whispered Spiderman as he towered over the sobbing man in triumph. 

"Stop it!" Spiderman cried, clamping his hands over his ears to drown out the hiss of his double's voice, "You're not real! This is some kind of nightmare. I remember I breathed in some of that smoke from that bomb Mysterio threw at me. This is just a hallucination! You aren't real!"

"Perhaps…But how sure are you that this isn't maybe a look into the future?" Spiderman riddled as slender silver strings began to materialize around the two, twisting and weaving themselves into a massive spider web, "How do you know this isn't really a prophetic dream? Or maybe a precursor of what I'm going to do?" 

Spidey said nothing as the strands of silver webbing began to quickly snake around his body, the edges of the strands cutting into his skin and they constricted tight, ensnaring the spider in their network. Around the entrapped man, the black walls of darkness again faded away to the devastated cityscape of New York, all the buildings around the young superhero now raging towers of inferno. 

Hot tongues of fire spewed out of the smashed remains of windows. Distant terrified screams carried on the smoky wind that whipped through the burning streets. Looking around Spiderman saw his double had disappeared, leaving him ensnared in the immobilizing hold of the spider webs as the wall of flames continued to burn around him. 

"This is all a dream!" Spiderman shouted as he writhed against the strands of webbing that twined around his body, crushing him in their grip. "When I wake up, I'm going to stop you!" he called in promise into the empty street that had been turned into the fire and brimstones of hell, the red sky overhead now thick with black smoke, "You're not going to win! I won't let you! I'm going to stop you and the rest of the Sinister Six!" 

"Poor little fool…" boomed a massive voice as if God himself had descended into the bowels of hell to pass final judgment. The ensnarled crime fighter immediately recognized it as his double's voice, amplified to deafening levels. "You've had you chance, but you refused to join me. And now you'll die just like everyone else who stands up against me…" 

"No! You won't win!" Spiderman cried out stubbornly as the thin strands of webbing constricted tighter around him. His breathing became labored as he struggled for air from behind the strangling strands that wrapped around his neck like a noose, "This isn't real! It's all a dream!"

But the last of his words faded away in his throat as the strands cut into his throat, blocking any air from reaching his oxygen starved lungs. The young man's eyes grew heavy as a thick shroud of darkness descended upon him, spiraling him out into space. Drifting away into the void, Spiderman felt his body falling, falling down into the darkness…

************ 

A low roll of thunder slowly faded away into the distance outside as hard waves of rain continued to pound on the quiet building. The building was a tall, one story movie studio, once Quientin Beck's home base of operation for special effects and movie magic. And it was dark and had been abandoned years before the master illusionist had become the infamous Mysterio. Except for the sharp plinks of rain on the studio's roof, the low murmur of muffled voices was the only sound in the whole place. 

Behind the heavy wooden door of one of the studio's many storage rooms, a shrill cry of disbelief rang out through the cavernous building, "What?! We finally caught this wall crawling criminal and you're having doubts? I say we go back home while he's still out. He's too dangerous to take any chances with, Octavius."

Huddled together amongst piles of long abandoned, dust covered movie props, stood five figures under a hanging light fixture whose light sputtered and threatened to be extinguish with every flash of lightening outside. 

An alien battle cruiser, several three foot tall model skyscrapers, a life size animatronic alligator, a miniaturized replica of the pyramids of Giza, and at least five dozen huge, unmarked wooden crates were crammed in the small room, creating a strange backdrop for its even stranger occupants. A sixth figure lay unconscious on his back off on one side of the room on some kind of medieval torturing device. From behind the drugged man's scarlet mask, garbled groans sounded softly. 

"I agree with you, my dear Electro, that Spiderman is too dangerous to take any chances with. And that is exactly the reason why we must determine if this if the Spiderman we came to this dimension for," rasped Dr. Octopus methodically, the overhead light of the studio's storage room gleaming brightly off his four slithering adamantium tentacles, "think of the repercussions if we accidentally took back this dimension's Spiderman and left out Spiderman here to reek havoc and total chaos! All because we were in too big of a hurry to ask the necessary questions!" 

Max Dillon, the superpower fire cracker also known as Electro, crunched his face into a skeptical scowl. Agitated sparks of electricity flickered off his body as he crossed his arms in a huff and snorted, "But you saw him at the news station- We all did! He was there at the scene of the crime. How much more evidence do you need against him?!"

"I don't know…" broke in Mysterio thoughtfully, standing closely beside the drugged man in question, "I think I have to agree with Octavius. The Spiderman we fought earlier today seemed different…"

"That may be, but what about all those news clippings we found on Spiderman?" hissed Venom incredulously to the others, "Almost all of them portray Spiderman just like the one from our dimension. He's a menace that needs to be disposed of." Stalking over towards the unconscious wall crawler, the symbiote wearing photojournalist said coldly, "We think we should save everyone the trouble of hauling him back and just get rid of this pest right now…" Smiling a ghastly toothy grin, Venom licked his lips in anticipation of a feast as he came to stand over the prone web swinger. 

"Hold up, Venom," warned Mysterio, moving to push himself between their unconscious captive and Venom, "If you didn't remember, all those clippings on Spiderman calling him a menace were written by the Daily Bugle. And we all know what kind of yellow journalism that tabloid churns out."

"What are you talking about?" growled the symbiote, his giant red tongue lashing the air. 

"Com'mon! In our dimension, the Bugle portrays Spiderman as a hero no matter what he does!" Beck exclaimed, "I'm beginning to think Jonah Jameson interprets his own version of the truth no matter what dimension he's in."

"Okay…So newspapers thrown out on a technicality, there's still a lot of circumstantial evidence against the bug, " Electro pointed out with a slight nod of his head towards the drugged man laying motionless on the nearby rack that had been put into storage after the filming of some Arthurian movie several years before. 

"Well, I don't care about circumstantial evidence," the aging Vulture growled suddenly from his perch on the edge of one of the many wooden crates shoved in the small room. Hopping down from his place as easily as a twenty year old, the bald old man slowly stalked towards Spiderman's prone body, "Don't you think it's time to unmask this freak, murderer or not? It's time to put an end to all this secrecy and find out who Spiderman really is." 

"Excellent suggestion," Dr. Octopus said, flashing one of his once-in-a-blue-moon smiles that came across as naturally as a dog trying to tango, "The time has come to find out once and for all who this masked man really is!" 

Hovering around the unconscious form, the five man stood looking down at Spiderman, seemingly hesitant to finally unveil their greatest mystery. Mustering his courage, Dr. Octopus reached one of his metal arms out towards Spiderman's head. Gently plucking a handful of Spiderman's scarlet mask between his tentacle's pincers, Octavius muttered almost philosophically, "Now we will know…"

Pulling back, Spiderman's red mask slowly slipped from off his head. As the mask came free, the gathered men exchanged mutters of disbelief at the sight they beheld. Eyes closed tightly almost in pain beneath a flatted mat of dark brown hair, the face of a young man meet his captor's disbelieving eyes. 

"It's just a kid!" Mysterio exclaimed, his voice shrill from out of his helmet's microphones. 

"Impossible!" Dr. Octopus spat, his mouth twisting into a scowl. 

"This has to be a mistake," Electro muttered quietly to himself, shaking his head from side to side slowly, "How could a kid be Spiderman?"

"Disappointing isn't he?" Venom hissed, his oily looking symbiote skin shining an inky black in the flickering light overhead. He could feel his associates' inquiring eyes snap from the unmasked boy onto him. 

"You mean you knew who Spiderman was all this time?" The Vulture demanded, his bulging yellowish eyes boring into Eddie Brock, "Why didn't you tell us this before? Do you know how many deaths we could have prevented had we known who Spiderman really was? We could have stopped this monster a long time ago!" true outrage dripped from Toomes' voice as he turned on Venom. 

The unblinking white demonic eyes of Venom revealed nothing as he looked out onto the other men gathered around the unconscious wall crawler. Venom stood silently, remembering all he had suffered at the hands of Spiderman, how his secret of the web swinger's true identity had been his only upper hand against the insect's ruthless nature. But his true reason he couldn't reveal to the others…

"That is none of your business," he snapped into Toomes' face dangerously, warning the old man and the others to back off the subject. A tense moment passed as another low roll of thunder sounded outside. 

Coughing loudly to break the tense silence, Electro stammered uneasily, "Well, we've seen his face, but who _is _Spiderman?" 

Reluctantly breaking his death stare from the Vulture, Venom growled, "His name's Peter Parker. He's a student at ESU and is one of the Daily Bugle's photographers. He's the one that got me fired and ruined my life. He's the one that brought the symbiote and I together and made us Venom."

"A mere child…Spiderman! I still can't believe it," Octavius snarled as he paced from side to side restlessly as if too agitated to stand still for more then a few seconds, "Is there anything else you'd like to share with us?" he added sarcastically with a growl. 

Venom glared openly at the scientist. Pulling his lips back from his mouthful of sharp teeth, he snarled, "If we were you, we'd suggest watching your tongue. Because if you're not careful, we'll rip it right out of your face and eat it!"

"Are you threatening me?!" Octavius exploded, raising up on his back two tentacles to tower over Venom, "Nobody threatens Dr. Otto Octavius!" 

Backing away warily, the other super powered men gave the two enough of a berth to escape an immediate danger to their own persons. Behind Mysterio, Electro, and the Vulture, the drugged wall crawler's body twitched slightly as though he were in the middle of a vivid dream, unaware of the growing turmoil around him. 

Hearing the unmasked boy issue a low moan, Mysterio glanced down at Spiderman who was beginning to slowly wake. Whipping around towards the two men glaring daggers at each other, the master of illusions ordered, "Will you two stop fighting! We have bigger problems right now. My hallucinogenic gas is starting to wear off. What are we going to do with him?"

Glancing between the scientist and the drugged wall crawler in momentary indecision of which of the two warranted his more immediate attention, Venom finally said, "Let us read his conscious. We can tell if he's the Spiderman we're looking for."

"Can you really do that?" Electro questioned curiously. 

"Just move out of our way," Brock snipped as he shoved his muscular body to the head of Spiderman whose whole body shivered as though extremely cold or going through some kind of emotions distress. The young boy's face was pulled into an unconscious grimace, his eyes rapidly twitching under his eyelids in violent reaction to the vivid dreams conjured up by Mysterio's hallucinogenic pink mist. 

Gathering closely around the shivering spandex clad body, the four super powered men looked at Venom expectantly who towered above Peter's head. Ignoring the spectators, Venom positioned both his hands to cup either side of the boy's head. Slowly, small wisps of black symbiote tendrils snaked off from the tips of his clawed fingers to seep onto the temples of Spiderman's head. Oozing across his forehead like thick oil, several strands of the symbiote wound their way down the sides of his head to wrap partially around his throat just above the collar of his Spiderman suit.

"Now everybody be quiet," directed the mind reader coldly, hunching over the drugged man's shivering body in concentration, "He may react violently. If he starts to wake up more or tries to move, hold him down. But don't touch the symbiote or we may accidentally read your minds too." 

Stationing themselves around the twitching wall crawler, the other man prepared to react if need be. Barely seconds after Venom began the procedure, Spiderman's body suddenly spasmed, his neck and back arching violently, his arms and legs snapping straight out on the wooden rack. Crying out weakly, the boy writhed under his captor's iron grasps that slammed down to hold him in place. 

"Watch out! He's strong even drugged," Toomes' called out as he pinned one of Spiderman's ankles flat on the table, straining his muscles to subdue their prisoner. 

"I just hope he hurries up!" Dr. Octopus snarled under his breath as his four metal arms pinned down Spiderman's wrists and chest, "The insect is stronger then I would have expected under the circumstances." Beside the good doctor, Electro and Mysterio wrestled to keep the thrashing man from throwing himself right off the table he lay on. 

"Hurry up, Venom! We can't hold him down forever!" Electro cried desperately, fighting to keep Spiderman's booted foot from kicking him right in the nose. 

Hearing the urgent call, Eddie Brock quickly released his grip on Spiderman's memories. The vivid pictures still played within his mind's eye. Past memories of an old man laying bleeding from a gunshot wound and the daring rescue of a gorgeous red head from a death fall off the Oueensboro Bridge stood out as some of the clearest images. The rest were muddled and fuzzy as the faces of countless enemies and people flashed before his eyes. But the most haunting of the memories was a echoing voice that chanted a single phrase, "With great power comes great responsibility…" Something about those words told Venom that those fleeting words held more meaning to Spiderman then he could ever understand. 

Entranced by these visions, Venom stood silent, staring out into space. Multiple symbiote tendrils still clung to the wall crawler's face, but the unmasked superhero had stopped his convulsions and now lay still beneath his captors crushing hands. 

Releasing his metal tentacles from off the now motionless boy, Octavius turned towards venom and demanded coldly, "And?! What did you find out?" 

Shaking his head slightly, Venom unwound the rest of the tendrils of symbiote flesh from off Peter's head and neck. Composing his thoughts, he sputtered, "It's…it's not the Spiderman we're looking for. This one's totally different from our Spiderman."

But before Venom's startling revelations could receive any initial reactions from the others, a mumbled groan sounded over the pounding of rain on the abandoned studio roof where the storm still raged outside. Looking down at the waking wall crawler, the five dimensional travelers saw the first flash of two brilliant blue irises peek out from behind the boy's half opened eyelids. 

Blinking so slow the gathered men encircling him doubted him opening them again, the boy lay motionless as he groggily raised a hand to the side of his pounding head and let out another low moan. Wincing under the bright light that shined down mercilessly onto his face, Peter slurred incoherently, "No…Not like you…All a dream…" The boy's eyelids slid shut as his random mumbles faded away and he drifted off again. 

Giving the boy one last questioning glance, the Vulture rasped doubtfully, "Are you sure about him, Venom?" 

"Yes," answered Brock, a number of black symbiote tentacles slowly undulating in the air from off his massive shoulders, "We found no hint of evil intentions in his mind. He's no threat to us."

"What do we do with him then if he's not the Spiderman we need?" Max Dillon asked, directing his question to Dr. Octopus, the unofficial leader of the group. 

"Let us wait and see…" the pudgy scientist said gruffly, staring at the unmasked superhero thoughtfully through his dark sunglasses, "If what Venom said is correct, then this Spiderman may still prove useful to us." 

Meanwhile, on the medieval stretching rack, the last of the hallucinogenic gas was beginning to finally wear off. Cracking his gritty eyes open a slit, Peter again winced as he heard distant voices arguing loudly somewhere beyond the wall of blinding white light that shined down into his face. The voices were muffled and unintelligible to the boy as he began to slowly become aware of his surroundings. Stretching out his sore and tight muscles, Peter realized he lay on his back on something extremely hard and uncomfortable. 

Gaining more control over his sluggish body, Spidey blinked back the bright light to allow his eyes to adjust. Around him, he could begin to make out some of the words of the conversation. Several times he thought he heard his name being said, but was unable to know for sure. Trying to focus his blurred vision, the young crime fighter stifled another moan. 

Through the thick fog that clouded his head, Peter felt the lingering impression of a horrifying dream, its memory teetering just on the edge of his subconscious. Although the details had been for the most part lost, he still felt the vague remnants of some unnamable horror creeping along his spine. He vaguely remembered Mary Jane being there and someone else. And for reasons he couldn't quite remember, he knew something bad had happened to the young red head in his dream…The feeling was so unnerving that something had happened to MJ, he suddenly had the urge to just see her and make sure she was alright. 

'Where am I?' he wondered groggily, managing to pull his throbbing head a few inches off the table he lay one. He felt his stomach churn as his head swum from vertigo. Swallowing the bitter taste of acidy bile from the back of his throat, Spiderman tried to muster the energy needed to sit up. But before he could pull himself up, several strong hands suddenly slammed down on his arms and legs, pinning him down against the hard wooden surface beneath him. 

Startled, Spiderman immediately tensed. Squinting through the bright light that still bore down into his light sensitive eyes, he felt his heart stop beating as he looked up in shock at the faces of Venom, Dr. Octopus, Electro, Mysterio, and the Vulture. 

"Oh, _crap_!" he wailed now totally awake as he strained his muscles to move. His struggles proved useless as the men surrounding him easily held his squirming body down. He was still too weak from the hallucinogenic gas to fight any of his captors let alone try to fend off all five at once. His stomach clenched in fear, thinking his end had come. 

"Relax," Dr. Octopus directed sternly as his bowl haircut and sunglass totting head come into full view, "We'll let you up just as soon as you stop thrashing around."

"Why? So you guys can give me a ten second head start before you send the hunting party after me?" Spidey asked in a tight, fear strained voice despite his usual wisecracks. Freezing, the boy's eyes snapped open wide as he suddenly became aware of a cool draft of air chill his naked cheeks. Looking around in dread, he saw the world did not have the familiar milky cast of the eyepieces of his Spiderman mask. Panicked, he tried to immediately shield his face with his hands but found to his dismay, his captors still retained their immobilizing grip of him, hindering him from any such actions. Staring up like a deer caught in the headlight of an oncoming car he shrieked, "My mask!" 

He felt the pit of his stomach seize up in sickness as the world seemed to crash down around him as he lay helpless at the mercy of his captors. It was over. They knew who he was. They _knew_. After killing him, they'd probably go after everyone he knew or had ever had any association with. Mary Jane. Aunt May. Who knew who else. All that mattered was that they _knew. _Oh God, they knew…

For a moment Spiderman thought they were going to kill him right there on the spot. But instead, Dr. Octopus gave a slight nod of his head to the others, motioning to them to release the restrained crime fighter. A crashing round of thunder sounded from outside as the costumed criminals surrounding Spiderman flickered in and out of sight in the sputtering light bulb that hung from above. 

Immediately scooting away from his captors up to a sit on the far side of the table, Spidey quickly slid off from the corner of the medieval torturing device he had just been laying on. Forcing his weak and wobbly legs to support his body, the unmasked wall crawler stumbled backwards away from the group of his worst enemies. The room spun wildly as he willed himself to fight the lingering aftereffects of the drug Mysterio had used on him. Backing into the wall behind him unsteadily, he felt a cold chill creep up his spine as the other five men in the room slowly came around to form an enclosed semi-circle around him. 

"So what happens now?" he asked, his eyes narrowed warily at the super villains that circled around him waiting for them to make the first move. If they attacked, even though he had only a fraction of a chance of escaping alive, Spiderman had already made up his mind that he was going to go down fighting. 

"What happens now is up to you," Dr. Octopus replied, revealing nothing in his voice. He stood arms clasped behind his back, looking at the unmasked boy from behind his all concealing sunglasses, leaving Spiderman shivering under his unrelenting black gaze. Beside him on either side, Electro, Mysterio, Venom, and the Vulture stood silently, staring at the cornered superhero with unwavering glares. 

"What's that suppose to mean?" he demanded, secretly wanting more than anything to have his mask back so he could hide the fear he was sure was written vividly across his face. 

"I mean, it is your decision whether you decide to join us and work with us to stop your alternate-self…" 

"My alternate-what?" Spidey muttered under his breath, staring at the scientist in subdued confusion. What was this psychotic mass murder talking about? 

"It seems there are some explanations in order on both our sides," Octavius noted sternly with a grim frown pulled across his face, "It appears our friend here is not up to speed with our current situation…" 

***********

So there you go! Next chapter for this story may be awhile seeing as how "Screams of the Spider" is now down to its final chapter…or two, I'm really not sure. But it needs working on no matter what. And then there's my little comic venture too. So don't forget to drop a review and let me know what you think of my comic version idea. 

Signing out

-LAXgirl 


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